Buffer

Buffer (pronounced buhf-er)

(1) A static apparatus at the end of a railroad car, railroad track etc, for absorbing shock during coupling, collisions etc with the contact section made usually from spring-loaded steel pads or (in areas of low-speed activity such as shunting yards) timber.

(2) Any device, material, or apparatus used as a shield, cushion, or bumper, especially on machinery.

(3) Any intermediate or intervening shield or device reducing the danger of interaction between two machines, chemicals, electronic components etc.

(4) A person or thing that shields and protects against annoyance, harm, hostile forces etc, or that lessens the impact of a shock or reversal.

(5) Any reserve moneys, negotiable securities, legal procedures, etc., that protect a person, organization, or country against financial ruin.

(6) In ecology, as buffer state, an animal population that becomes the prey of a predator that usually feeds on a different species.

(7) In computing, a storage device for temporarily holding data until the device is ready to receive or process the data, as when a receiving unit has an operating speed lower (eg a printer) than that of the unit (eg a computer) feeding data to it.

(8) In electronics, a circuit with a single output activated by one or more of several inputs.

(9) In chemistry, any substance or mixture of compounds that, added to a solution, is capable of neutralizing both acids and bases without appreciably changing the original acidity or alkalinity of the solution; also called a buffer solution; any solution containing such a substance.

(10) To treat with a buffer.

(11) To cushion, shield, or protect; to lessen the adverse effect of; ease:

(12) In computing, temporarily to save data before actively accessing it so it may be loaded at a rapid or uniform rate.

(13) A device for polishing or buffing, as a buff stick or buff wheel, often in the form “floor buffer” for polishing floors; a worker who uses such a device.

(14) In admiralty slang, the senior non-commissioned officer serving on a ship or boat.

(15) In (mostly UK) colloquial use, a good-humored, slow-witted fellow, usually an elderly man, thus often as “old buffer” (archaic).

(16) In medicine, a preparation designed to decrease acidity in the stomach.

(17) In geopolitics, as buffer state, a country the land mass of which physically separates two opposing potentially powers and the existence of which is intended to prevent conflict or permit an attacked state a greater time to organize its defense.

(18) In geopolitics as buffer zone, a region separating two areas, often demilitarized, to segregate antagonistic populations: based usually on regional, ethnic or religious lines.

1835: The noun buffer in the sense of "something that absorbs a blow, apparatus for deadening the concussion between a moving body and that against which it strikes" was an agent noun from the obsolete verb buff (make a dull sound when struck), from the mid-sixteenth century Old French buffe & bufe (a blow, slap, punch).  The figurative sense of "anything that prevents impact or neutralizes the shock of impact of opposing forces" is from 1858 and was adopted universally by the railroad industry.  The sense of “one who or that which polishes by buffing” dates from 1854, an agent noun from the verb.  The verb use extended to “lessen the impact of” by 1886.  The use in chemistry began in the mid-nineteenth century, borrowed by analogy from the railroads although the meaning in science was soon extended and was adopted in electrical engineering.  In geopolitics the term wasn’t used until the mid-nineteenth century, the word again picked up from the general use inspired by railroads.  However, the concept had been well-understood for centuries.  The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) created the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (modern day Belgium & the Netherlands) to remove the means of conflict between the UK, France & Prussia and although it lasted only until the separation of Belgian in 1830, the defined land-mass continued to fulfil the same function.

The derived forms include buffering, buffered & bufferize; the noun plural is buffers.  In the nineteenth century, a number of languages picked up buffer directly from English, including Danish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese & Romansch, spread apparently by the international growth in railroad construction.

Europe 1945-1989.

The deployment of ten-odd Russian army divisions on the border with Ukraine’s revived interest in the old squabble about whether, in the last days of the USSR, politicians from the West made promises or at least provided assurances to Moscow that NATO would not expand eastwards.  The archivists have for decades been looking for any document which might clarify at least what was at the time discussed but nothing emerged until some material was declassified in 2017.  The conclusion is that the USSR was never offered any formal guarantee about NATO membership but the interpretations of what happened after 1990 vary, the view from the West that the enlargement of NATO was undertaken honorably and in accordance with the rights international law accords to sovereign states whereas Moscow’s narrative is one of Western deception and duplicity. 

Most scholars of the Cold War seem to agree the story begins in February 1990 when James Baker (b 1930; US secretary of state 1989-1992), secretary of state under George HW Bush (1924–2018; US president 1989-1993 (George XLI)) met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (b 1931; leader of the USSR 1985-1991) in Moscow.  Only three months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the matter of immediate interest was whether Germany, divided since 1945 into east and west, would be reunified, something that was most feared, though for different reasons, in the Kremlin and Downing Street.  London’s concern was its traditional fear to the emergence of an overwhelmingly strong Germany; Moscow feared the specter of NATO’s missiles being stationed in the GDR (East Germany). 

What both Russian and US transcripts of the meeting reveal was that the US position was it was in everyone’s interest that a unified Germany existed within NATO's political and military structure but at no point did either side discuss any of the nations aligned with the Warsaw Pact joining NATO.  That was not on the agenda because the thought of the imminent collapse of the USSR had not then occurred to many, none of whom were prominent in the US administration.  Orthodox political thought in the US, across most of the political spectrum, was that the Soviet empire probably was doomed but it’s life was expected to extend for at least decades.  A similar spirit animated the discussion Gorbachev had the next day with the FRG’s (West Germany) Chancellor Helmut Kohl (1930–2017; Chancellor of FRG or Germany 1982 to 1998), most taken up with the matter of German unification, NATO enlargement not even mentioned.  What was agreed was that the US, France, the UK and Germany, agreed not to deploy non-German NATO forces in the former East Germany.

In casual use, a "buffer zone" can be used of any mechanism (which need not be physical) designed prevents two entities coming into contact.

However, in the great geopolitical event of the second half of the twentieth century, the USSR did in 1991 collapse, ending the perhaps unhappy but essentially stable post-war arrangement whereby east and west were separated by an array of buffer states, the cordon sanitaire which was built by Comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953), which constituted the line of the Iron Curtain from “…Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic…”.  They were difficult years for the post-Soviet buffer states but, in 1999, NATO welcomed as members, three nations of the former Warsaw Pact: Hungary, Poland & the Czech Republic.  That sounds now like an event of great significance and of course it was but with all the social and economic disruption happening in Russia, it evoked surprisingly few complaints, the political faction in Moscow which tilted towards Europe and saw their country’s future there, much more influential than today.  Some did however dwell on things.  A decade after the first NATO expansion, Gorbachev complained that the West had tricked Moscow, claiming he’d been assured NATO would not be moving “one centimeter further east."

Gorbachev later retreated from that, in 2014 admitting that in all the discussions which followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification Germany, the topic of “NATO expansion” was never raised by either side, adding that not a single Eastern European country brought up the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact had been dissolved 1991.  Equally sanguine seems to have been the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007; president of the Russian Federation 1991-1999).  Although hardly enthusiastic about NATO expansion, he raised no objection but did urge caution on the West, warning it was important to take into account public opinion in Russia.  In that he may have had some misplaced faith in realism of those he viewed as his new Western partners, writing later that "the spirit of the treaty on the final settlement...precludes the option of expanding the NATO zone into the East."  None of that was in writing of course, the generous interpretation being inferences were drawn where no implications were intended.  Either that or, in Washington, views changed in the post Cold-War world.

Still, for a time, tensions seemed not great and cooperative structures were created including NATO-Russia Founding Act, a kind of statement of peaceful co-existence and in 2002, a joint consultative council was established as a framework in which differences could be resolved; rather wishy-washy in detail, it was regarded by most as ineffectual but at least harmless.  The real crossing of the Rubicon came in 2004 when NATO undertook its largest expansion, admitting seven more Eastern European countries including, critically, the Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia, Latvia, all of which had been republics, unhappily, of the USSR.  It was the closest NATO’s divisions & missiles had ever been to Moscow.

By 2007 with the oil price high and the Russian economy thus buoyant, if rather distorted by its reliance on energy exports, the new Russian president, Vladimir Putin (b 1952; Russian president or prime-minister since 1999) made the official Russian position explicit, accusing NATO (ie the US) of duplicity and threatening Russia:  “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion has no relation with the modernization of the alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.”  “What happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today?"  There being no documents, it seems Mr Putin might be relying on Mr Yeltsin’s evocation of the “spirit” of the discussions which both he and Mr Gorbachev had earlier confirmed contained no discussion of NATO expansion.  Still, some sense of realism was on display at a summit in Bucharest in 2008 when NATO declined to offer Georgia and Ukraine a fast-track path to membership but assured both they would eventually join the alliance.  No date was mentioned and it seemed a quiet triumph of Realpolitik for the Kremlin.

However, four months later, Russia invaded Georgia, crushing its armed forces and occupying two regions that had already had near complete autonomy.  Then, in 2014, after seizing and then annexing the Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula, Moscow equipped, financed, and provided military support to separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine, stoking the war that continues to this day, the death toll some fourteen-thousand.  NATO and the Kremlin no longer have active anything but emergency channels of communications.

Mr Putin is quite emphatic that assurances were provided NATO would never expand beyond what was necessitated by the unification of Germany and the last US ambassador to the USSR did insist, in his testimony to a congressional enquiry, that Mr Gorbachev had received assurances that if Germany united and remained in NATO, the borders of NATO would not move eastward and declassified documents released in 2017 do suggest Mr Baker may well have said “not one inch eastward” (source or Mr Gorbachev’s “one centimetre”) but that this was subsequently vetoed by Mr Bush who had a different vision of a “new world order”.  In the West, over the years, many seemed to treat all this as hearsay evidence and prefer to cite the 1990 treaty (the 2+4 Treaty) which created the framework by which German unification would be achieved.  There was no mention of NATO enlargement.  Beyond that, also invoked in the West is an argument apparently based on the doctrine of “acceptance by acquiescence” from contract law: Russia accepted enlargement, with detailed conditions, and in writing, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was agreed.  One can see what they’re getting at but to use an analogy with domestic contract law seems a bit of a stretch but NATO expansion anyway didn’t happen in isolation.  The first expansion, in 1999, came around the time of the NATO’s bombing campaigns in the Balkans, a traditional Russian sphere of influence and aimed at their traditional allies the Serbs.  While sympathetic to the US operation in Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion of Iraq raised Moscow's ire.

Mr Putin’s position has since hardened.  The massing of infantry and cavalry divisions on the border has a nineteenth century feel but the economic and cyber warfare is already being waged and what’s already being called the Ukrainian crisis has attracted speculation from military and political theorists.  All agree (1) Mr Putin wants his buffer states back, (2) this is the first time in history the timing of military action must await the end of the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics and (3), the Kremlin learned certain lessons about the nature of the Biden administration from the scuttle from Afghanistan.  There the consensus seems to end but Mr Putin's ambition, no less than a re-configuration of the architecture of European security arrangements back to the 1992 lines on the map, is breathtaking.  This is not however 1941 and the world isn't (yet) quite holding it's breath.  Mr Putin has gambled before and won and if he can emerge from this round with something tangible, like a land bridge to the Crimea, he'd take it.  He plans anyway to still be Tsar when all the Western leaders facing him are gone and believes Russia's position in the future will only strengthen.     

Cordon

Cordon (pronounced kawr-dn)

(1)  A line of police, sentinels, military posts, warships, etc., enclosing or guarding an area.

(2) A cord or braid worn for ornament or as a fastening.

(3) A ribbon worn usually diagonally across the breast as a badge of a knightly or honorary order.

(4) A projecting course of stones at the base of a parapet.

(5) The coping of a scarp.

(6) In architecture, a stringcourse, especially one having little or no projection.

(7) A cut-stone riser on a stepped ramp or the like.  Also called a string course or belt course, an ornamental projecting band or continuous moulding along a wall.

(8) In horticulture, a fruit tree or shrub trained to grow along a support or a series of such supports.  Tree consists of a single stem bearing fruiting spurs, produced by cutting back all lateral branches

(9) To surround or blockade with or as with a cordon (usually followed by off).

(10) In cricket, the arc of fielders on the off side, behind the batsman; the slips and gully (but not the more distant third man).

1400–1450: Borrowed by Middle English from Middle French cordon (ribbon), diminutive of the Old French corde (string), derived from the Classical Latin chorda (gut) and Ancient Greek (Doric) χορδή or khordḗ (string of gut, cord, string of a lyre).

The meaning "cord or ribbon worn as an ornament” dates from the 1560s.  Sense of "a line of people or things guarding something" is from 1758.  The form cordon sanitaire (sanitary cordon), first noted in 1857, was a public health measure in the French Second Empire (Napoleon III), a guarded line between infected and uninfected districts during outbreaks of infectious disease.

The Cordon Sanitaire in Geopolitics

Originally a public health measure to contain the spread of infectious diseases, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; Prime Minister of France 1906-1909 & 1917-1920) conjured the phrase as a geopolitical metaphor in March 1919.  He urged the newly independent border-states, stretching from Finland to the Balkans (also called limitrophe states) that had seceded from the Russian Empire (and its successor the USSR) to form a defensive union and thus quarantine Western Europe from the spread of communism.

The concept evolved and was in its most politically and geographically defined form during the cold war when buffer states gave shape to the so-called iron curtain between east and west.  Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK Prime Minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) didn’t invent the phrase but made it famous in his address at Fulton, Missouri in March 1946 when he noted that “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”  This was the opposite of Clemenceau’s vision of protecting west from east; instead the buffer-states existed to protect the USSR from any prospect of another invasion from a resurgent Germany, a dominant theme in early post-war Soviet foreign policy.

Comrade Stalin's Cordon Sanitaire: the Cold-War Buffer States

The buffer states were a construct of Comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953), his words backed first by four-hundred divisions and later the Soviet nuclear arsenal.  They lasted more than forty years, the system beginning to fracture only in the mid-1980s when USSR Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (b 1931; leader of the USSR, 1985-1991) retreated from adherence to the Brezhnev (Leonid Brezhnev; 1906–1982; leader of the USSR, 1964–1982) Doctrine which held that if socialism was threatened in any state, other socialist governments had an obligation to intervene to preserve it.  Gorbachev initiated the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring), both of which exposed the contradictions inherent in the Soviet system.  By 1989, long an economic failure, the eastern bloc began politically to crumble and a wave of revolutions began.  In 1991, the USSR was dissolved.

Crowd control cordon creation: Metal outside & the velvet rope within, Mean Girls Premiere, Los Angeles, April 2004.

Temporary cordons are often not sufficiently robust physically to act as an effective barrier against a breach induced even by mild force and rely on their symbolic value in the same way the red, amber & green traffic signals controlling intersections usually achieve the desired effect even though pieces of illuminated colored plastic inherently can't stop a car.  Respect for them (coupled with a fear of the consequences if flouted) is what makes them effective.  The cordoning of crowds at events often works the same way.  While facilities such as stadiums or race tracks usually have permanent fences or other structures difficult to cross, ad-hoc events in spaces intended for other purposes use relatively flimsy temporary barriers which wouldn't withstand much pressure and rely on the cooperation (and again, fear of consequences) of those cordoned off.  Outside, cordons typically are created with movable metal or plastic modular fencing while inside, the favored form is the "velvet rope", strung between stanchions (although lengths of plastic chain are sometimes seen).  These have the advantage of being able to re-configure a cordon at short notice and when not in use, demand little space to store.         

Greenline

Greenline (pronounced green-lahyn)

(1) In Lebanon, a demarcation line which divided predominantly Christian East Beirut and the predominantly Muslim West Beirut, described during the civil war (1975-1990).

(2) In Cyprus, a demarcation line which divides the island between the Greek (south) and Turkish Cypriots (north), passing through the capital, Nicosia and described in 1974.

(3) In France, a demarcation line which divided the nation between the Nazi-occupied north (Zone nord) and the nominally independent (Vichy) south (Zone libre) and operative between 1940-1942 when the south was occupied and renamed Zone sud (Zone south) until the liberation of France in 1944.

(4) In Israel, the Armistice border, described in 1949 and following essentially the line of demarcation between the military forces of Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon & Syria at the conclusion of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.  It served as the de facto borders of the State of Israel between 1949 and the Six-Day War (1967).

(5) Any similar demarcation line between two hostile communities.

(6) To ease access to services to residents in specific areas, particularly by designating such areas as suitable for real-estate lending and property insurance.

1942 (the first generally acknowledged use in this context): The construct was green +‎ line (and also used commonly as green-line & green line and often with an initial capital).  The noun green was from the Middle English adjective grene, from the Northumbrian groene (green in the sense of the color of healthy, living plants which were growing & vigorous and used figuratively also to convey the meaning "freshly cut" or (of wood) “unseasoned”), from the earlier groeni, from the Old English grēne, from the Proto-West Germanic grōnī, from the Proto-Germanic grōniz, from the primitive Indo-European ghre- (to grow) and was related to the North Frisian green, the West Frisian grien, the Dutch groen, the Low German grön, green & greun, the German grün, the Danish & Norwegian Nynorsk grøn, the Swedish grön, the Norwegian Bokmål grønn and the Icelandic grænn.  The Proto -Germanic grōni- was the source also of the Old Saxon grani, the Old Frisian grene, the Old Norse grænn and the Old High German gruoni.  Line was from the Middle English line & lyne, from the Old English līne (line, cable, rope, hawser, series, row, rule, direction), from the Proto-West Germanic līnā, from the Proto-Germanic līnǭ (line, rope, flaxen cord, thread), from the Proto-Germanic līną (flax, linen), from the primitive Indo-European līno- (flax).  It was influenced in Middle English by Middle French ligne (line), from the Latin linea.  Greenline & greenlining are nouns & verbs, greenliner is a noun, greenlined is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is greenlines.

Green lines: Lindsay Lohan in Inhabit striped tie-back tube-top with Linea Pelle braided belt.

Around the planet, there have been many “Greenlines”, “Green Lines” and “Green-Lines”, the term often applied to rail-transport corridors, shipping companies and the boundary lines of spaces designated as “green”, usually in the context of environmental protection.  However, the best recognized use is now probably that from geopolitics where a “greenline” is a line described on a map to draw a demarcation between two hostile communities.  Such lines have existed for centuries, formally and informally but the first use of the term is generally thought to be the line drawn in 1940 which divided France between the Nazi-occupied north (Zone nord) and the nominally independent (Vichy) south (Zone libre).  It was operative between 1940-1942 when the south was occupied and renamed Zone sud (Zone south) and that arrangement lasted until the liberation of France in 1944.  It’s not known what the color was on the line originally drawn but the one which reached the Foreign Ministry in Berlin for approval was green and still exists in the US national archives.

The Cyprus Greenline.

In the troubled decades since, there have been many green lines and one of the best known is also illustrative of some of the phenomena associated with the concept.  Since 1974, after a conflict which was the culmination of years of disputes, the island of Cyprus has been divided by a Greenline, the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (the TRNC, recognized only by Republic of Türkiye) to the north and the Greek dominated Republic of Cyprus to the south.  The Greenline extends from east to west for 180 km (120 miles) and is a United Nations (UN) controlled buffer zone separating the two and constitutes almost 3% of the land mass.  The 1974 Greenline was actually an outgrowth, dictated by necessity, of a line drawn some ten years earlier in the capital, Nicosia, in response to communal violence and at certain places in the densely populated ancient city of Nicosia, the it’s now just a few metres across while at its widest point, it stretches 7.4 km (4.6 miles).  In most aspects of public administration the northern and southern zones function as separate states although during periods there is a remarkable degree of cooperation and a pragmatic sense of what it’s possible profitably to do without disturbing the status quo.  However, even at times of high stress, both sides continue to administer shared essential services, notably Nicosia’s sewerage system, the rationale being “you just can’t separate shit”.

A section of the Greenline which bisects Nicosia.

One thing the buffer zone has achieved is the creation of a significant wildlife refuge for many species and, like the exclusion zone declared after the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power-plant in 1986, it has provided a habitat almost unique in Europe, its residents including the threatened Egyptian fruit bat, the endangered Mouflon sheep, the bee orchid, the Cyprus spiny mouse and the Eurasian thick-knee, a dwindling species of shorebird also known as a stone-curlew; all have multiplied in their new home.  Surveys have revealed the space has also become an important stopover and staging area for the migratory birds which use Cyprus during their spring and fall flights, buzzards, ospreys, harriers and the Northern lapwing (long in decline in Europe) all regular visitors.  Being a buffer zone, humans are excluded from the area but there are moves to extend environmental protection to the fragile areas directly beyond the borders as part of a plan to develop ecotourism and agritourism, producing and marketing “green” food from the area.  However, environmental awareness among Cypriots remains patchy and illegal dumping and poaching within the buffer zone remains prevalent.

The Museum of Barbarism, 2 Sehit Murruvet Ilhan Sok. Kumsal, Nicosia, Cyprus.

The Museum of Barbarism lies on the Turkish side of Nicosia just across a border crossing on the Greenline.  Essentially a static installation, frozen in both time and place, it's said to remain in almost exactly the same state as it was was found on Christmas Day, 1974.  The provided narrative states that on 24 December, Greek Cypriot irregulars forcibly entered the house of Dr Ilhan, a Major in the Turkish army who was that night on duty and in another place.  It's claimed the Doctor's wife, three children and a neighbor were killed by machine gun fire, six others seriously injured.

Snarge

Snarge (pronounced snn-arj)

(1) In military & civil aviation, slang, the remains of a bird after it has collided with an airplane (ie bird strike); originally of impacts with (ie "sucked into) turbine engines but latterly applied also to residue left on wings, fuselages etc.

(2) By adoption, the remains of birds and insects left on the windscreens of trains, cars, motorcycle fairings etc.

Early 2000s (probably): A portmanteau word, a blend of sn(ot) + (g)ar(ba)ge.  Snot (used here in the usual sense of “mucus, especially that from the nose”) was from the Middle English snot & snotte, from the Old English ġesnot & snott, from the Proto-West Germanic snott & snutt, from the Proto-Germanic snuttuz (nasal mucus), from the same base as snout and related to snite.  It was cognate with the North Frisian snot (snot), the Saterland Frisian Snotte (snot), the West Frisian snotte (snot), the Dutch snot (snot), the German Low German Snött (snot), the dialectal German Schnutz (snot), the Danish snot (snot) and the Norwegian snott (snot).  Trans-linguistically, “snot” is commendably consistent and its other uses (a misbehaving (often as “snotty”) child; a disreputable man; the flamed-out wick of a candle all reference something unwanted or undesirable).  That said, snot (mucus) is essential for human life, being a natural, protective and lubricating substance produced by mucous membranes throughout the body to keep tissues moist and act as a barrier against pathogens and irritants like dust and allergens, working to trap foreign particles; it also contains antimicrobial agents to fight infection.  So, when “out-of-sight & out-of-mind” it’s helpful mucus but when oozing (or worse) from the nostrils, it’s disgusting snot.

Garbage (waste material) was from the late Middle English garbage (the offal of a fowl, giblets, kitchen waste (though in earlier use “refuse, that which is purged away”), from the Anglo-Norman, from the Old French garber (to refine, make neat or clean), of Germanic origin, from the Frankish garwijan (to make ready).  It was akin to the Old High German garawan (to prepare, make ready) and the Old English ġearwian (to make ready, adorn).  The alternative spelling was garbidge (obsolete or eye dialect).  Garbage can be used of physical waste or figuratively (ideas, concepts texts, music etc) judged to be of poor quality and became popular in computing, used variously to mean (1) output judged nonsensical (for whatever reason), (2) corrupted data, (3) memory which although allocated was no longer in use and awaiting de-allocation) or (4) valid data misinterpreted as another kind of data.  Synonyms include junk, refuse, rubbish, trash & waste.  Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) used “Herr Garbage” as the name of the character who in The Great Dictator (1940) represented Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda 1933-1945).  Snarge is a noun and no derived forms have ever been listed but a creature which has become snarge would have been snarged and the process (ie point of impact) would have been the act of snarging.  Intrinsically, snarge is the result of a fatality so an adjective like snargish is presumably superfluous but traces of a non-fatal impact presumably could be described as snargelike or snargesque.

Dr Carla Dove (with some subjects), at work in the Smithsonian's Feather Identification Lab, Washington DC.

In a pleasing case of nominative determinism, Dr Carla Dove (b 1962) is manager of the Feather Identification Laboratory at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC where she heads a team identifying the types or species of birds that collide with military and civil aircraft.  She calls snarge “a term of art” (clearly she’s of the “eye of the beholder” school) and notes that although the scientific discipline of using snarge to determine the species involved in bird strikes began at the Smithsonian in 1960, the term doesn’t seem to have been coined there and its origin, like much slang with a military connection, is murky.  Although a 2003 article in Flying Safety magazine is sometimes cited as the source of the claim the word was “invented at the Feather Identification Laboratory”, Dr Dove is emphatic the staff there “borrowed it” from preparators (the technicians who prepare bird specimens for display or other uses by museums).  It certainly seems to have been in general use (in its specialized niche in military & aviation and wildlife safety circles) by at least the early-to-mid 2000s and the zeitgeisters at Wired magazine were in 2005 printing it without elaboration, suggesting at least in their editorial team it was already established slang.  So, it may long have been colloquial jargon in museums or among those working in military or civil aviation long before it appeared in print but no documentary evidence seems to exist.

The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne (2025) by Chris Sweeney.

The origin of the scientific discipline is however uncontested and the world’s first forensic ornithologist was the Smithsonian’s Roxie Laybourne (1910–2003).  In October, 1960, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, flying as Eastern Airlines Flight 375 out of Boston Logan Airport had cleared the runway by only a few hundred feet when it flew into a flock of birds, the most unfortunate of which damaged all four engines, resulting in a catastrophic loss of power, causing the craft to nosedive into Boston Harbor, killing 62 of the 72 souls aboard; although the Electra's engines were turbo-props rather than jets, they too are highly susceptible to bird-strike damage.  At the time, this was the greatest loss of life attributed to a bird-strike and the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) ordered all avian remains be sent to the Smithsonian Institution for examination.  There, Ms Laybourne received  the box of mangled bone, blood & feathers and began her investigation, her career taking a trajectory that would include not only the development of protocols designed to reduce the likelihood of such events damaging airliners but also involvement with the USAF (US Air Force) & NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).  Additionally, her work with the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and various police forces proved forensic ornithology could be of use a diagnostic tool in crime-solving, her evidence helping to convict murderers, kidnappers and poachers.  In 2025, journalist Chris Sweeney published The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne, a vivid telling of the tale of a woman succeeding in a world where feminism had not yet wrought its changes.

Snarge on the nosecone of a Cessna Citation, Eisenhower Airport, Wichita, Kansas, July 2021.  The dent indicates the point of impact, the airflow holding the corpse in place.  By the time of landing, the leaked body fluids had congealed to act as a kind of glue.

The study of aviation bird strikes is obviously a specialized field but snarge has come also to be used in the matter of insect deaths, specifically what now is known as the “windscreen phenomenon” (also in some regions as “windshield phenomenon”).  What that refers to are the increasingly common instances of people reporting they are seeing far fewer dead insects on the windscreens of their cars, many dating the onset of the decline to the late 1990s and the most common explanations offered for this are (1) climate change, (2) habitat loss and (3) the increasing use (or potency) of pesticides.  Individual observations of one’s windscreen now tending to accumulate less snarge than in years gone by is of course impressionistic and caution must be taken not to extrapolate the existence of a global trend from one piece of glass in one tiny part of the planet (what needs to be avoided is a gaboso (the acronym for Generalized Association Based On Single-Observation (also as the derived noun & verb) which is the act of taking one identifiable feature of someone or something and using it as the definitional reference for a group (it ties in with logical fallacies)).  However, the reports of increasingly snargeless windscreens were widespread and numerous so while that didn’t explain why it was happening, it did suggest that happening it was.

There was also the matter of social media platforms which have meant the volume of messages about a particular topic in the twenty-first century is not comparable with years gone by.  It’s simply impossible to calculate the extent to which these mass-market (free) platforms have operated as an accelerant (ie a force-multiplier of messaging) but few doubt it’s a considerable effect.  Still, it is striking the same observations were being made in the northern & southern hemispheres and the reference to the decline beginning in the late 1990s was also consistent and a number of studies in Europe and the US have found a precipitous drop in insect populations over the last three decades.  One interesting “quasi theory” was the improved aerodynamic efficiency of the modern automobile meant the entomological slaughter was reduced but quickly aeronautical engineers debunked that, pointing out a slippery shape has a “buffer zone” very close to the surface which means "bugs" have a greater chance of being sucked-in towards the speeding surface because of the differential between negative & positive pressure.  However, on most older vehicles, the “buffer zone” could be as much as 3 feet (close to a metre) from the body.  A bug heading straight for the glass would still be doomed but the disturbed air all around would have deflected a few.

Lindsay Lohan with Herbie in Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).

Herbie was a 1963 Volkswagen Type 1 (Beetle, 1938-2003) and despite curves making it look streamlined, its measured C_d (drag coefficient) was typically around 0.48-0.50, some 8% worse than contemporary vehicles of comparable frontal area.  What that meant was its buffer zone would extend somewhat further than the “New Beetle” (1997-2011) with a C_d between 0.38-0.41, again not as good as the competition because it was compromised by the need to maintain a visual link with the way things were done in 1938.  On the 1963 models (like Herbie) the flat, upright windscreen created significant drag and was obviously a good device for “snarge harvesting” but the later curved screen (introduced in 1973 with the 1303) probably didn’t spare many insects.

Dr Manu Saunders' graphic example of insect snarge on a windscreen during the 2010 "locust plague" in western NSW (New South Wales), Australia, April 2010.

Dr Manu Saunders is a Senior Lecturer in Ecology and Biology and the School of Environmental and Rural Science in Australia’s UNE (University of New England) and she pointed out that “anecdata is not scientific evidence” and just because anecdotes are commonly presented as “evidence of global insect decline” (the so-called “insectageddon”), that doesn’t of necessity make locally described conditions globally relevant.  The problem she identified was that although there have been well-conducted longitudinal studies of snarge on windscreens using sound statistical methods, all have used data taken from a relatively small geographical area while around the planet, there are more than 21 million km (13 million miles, (ie more than 80 round trips to the Moon) of “roads”).  Dr Saunders does not deny the aggregate number of insects is in decline but cautions against the use of one data set being used to assess the extent of a phenomenon with a number of causal factors.

Still snarge-free: The famous photograph of the 25 917s assembled for inspection outside the Porsche factory, Stuttgart, 1969.  The FIA’s homologation inspectors declined the offer to test-drive the 25 which was just as well because, hastily assembled (secretaries, accountants and such drafted in to help), some of were capable of being drive only a short distance in first gear.

Fortunately for Porsche, in 1969, although the decline in global insect numbers may already have begun, they were still buzzing around in sufficient numbers to produce the sacrificial snarge providing the necessary clue required to resolve the problem of chronic (and potentially lethal) instability afflicting the first 917s to be tested at speed.  In great haste, the 917 had been developed after the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the International Automobile Federation and world sport's dopiest regulatory body) “relaxed” the rules which previously had set a threshold of 50 identical units for cars classified as Group 4 (5 litre (305 cubic inch)) sports cars, reducing this to a minimum of 25.  What that meant was Porsche needed to develop both a car and a twelve-cylinder engine, both items bigger and more complex than anything it had before attempted and while this may not have been overly challenging task had the typical two years been available, the factory both to be ready for final testing in less than half the time.  Remarkably, the 917 was ready to hit the test-track in ten months.

Porsche 917LH  Chassis 001 in the livery of the IAA (Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung (International Automobile Exhibition)) used for the Frankfurt Motor Show.

The brief gestation period was impressive but there were teething problems.  The fundamentals, the 908-based space-frame and the 4.5 (275 cubic inch) litre air-cooled flat-12 engine (essentially, two of Porsche’s 2.25 (137 cubic inch) litre flat-sixes joined together) were robust and reliable from the start but, the sudden jump in HP (horsepower) meant much higher speeds and it took some time to tame the machine's behaviour at high-speed.  Aerodynamics was then still an inexact science and the maximum speed the 917 was able to attain on Porsche’s test track was around 180 mph (290 km/h) but when unleashed on the circuits with long straights where over 200 mph (320 km/h) was possible the early 917s proved highly unstable, the tail “wandering from side-to-side” something disconcerting at any speed but beyond 200 mph, frightening even for professional race drivers.

On Mulsanne Straight, Le Mans: The slippery 917LH (Langheck (Longtail), left) which proved "unsafe at high speed" (left) and the (slightly) slower 917K (Kurzheck (short-tail), right) which (in the hands of experts), was more manageable.

The instability needed to be rectified because the 917 had been designed with "a bucket of Deutsche Marks in one hand and a map of the Le Mans circuit in the other" and these were the days before the FIA started insisting chicanes be spliced into any straight where high speeds beckoned and the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans was then an uninterrupted 6 km (3.7 mile) straight line.  There, the test results and slide-rule calculations predicted, the 917s would achieve in excess of 360 km/h (224 mph).  Serendipitously, physics and nature combined to show the team where the problem lay: After one alarming high speed run, it was noticed that while the front and central sections of the bodywork were plastered with bloodied snarge, the fibreglass of the rear sections remained a pristine white, the obvious conclusion drawn that while the airflow was inducing the desired degree of down-force on the front wheels, it was passing over the rear of body, thus inducing the lift causing the "wandering".  Some rapid improvisation with pieces of aluminium and much duct tape (to this day a vital tool in the business) to create an ad-hoc, shorter, upswept tail transformed the behaviour and was the basis for what emerged from the factory's subsequent wind-tunnel testing as the 917K.  The rest is history.

Dodge Public Relations announces the world now has "spoilers".  Actually they'd been around for a while but, as Dodge PR knew, until it happens in America, it hasn't happened.

What happened to the 917 wasn’t novel.  In 1966, Dodge had found the slippery shape of its new fastback Charger had delivered the expected speed on the NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) ovals but it came at the cost of dangerous lift at the rear, drivers describing vividly the experience at speed as something like “driving on ice”.  The solution was exactly what Porsche three years later would improvise, a spoiler on the lip of the trunk (boot) lid which, although only 1½ inches (38 mm) high, at some 150 mph (240 km/h) the fluid dynamics of air-flow meant sufficient down-force was generated to tame the instability.  Of course, being NASCAR, things didn’t end there and to counter the objection the spoiler was a “non-stock” modification and thus not within the rules, Dodge cited the “safety measure” clause, noting an unstable car on a racetrack was a danger to all.  NASCAR agreed and allowed the device, upsetting the other competitors who cited the “equalization formula clause” and demanded they too be allowed to fit spoilers.  NASCAR agreed but set the height at maximum height at 1½ inches and specified they could be no wider than the trunk lid.  That left Dodge disgruntled because, in a quirk of the styling, the Charger had a narrower trunk lid than the rest of the field so everybody else’s spoilers worked better which seemed unfair, given it was Dodge that had come up with the idea.  NASCAR ignored that objection so for 1967 the factory added to the catalogue two small “quarter panel extensions” each with its own part number (left & right); once installed, the Charger gained a full-width spoiler.

Quartervent

Quartervent (pronounced kwawr-ter-vent)

A small, pivoted, framed (or semi-framed) pane in the front or rear side-windows of a car, provided to optimize ventilation.

1930s: The construct was quarter + vent.  Dating from the late thirteenth century, the noun quarter (in its numerical sense) was from the Middle English quarter, from the Anglo-Norman quarter, from the Old French quartier, from the Latin quartarius (a Roman unit of liquid measure equivalent to about 0.14 litre).  Quartus was from the primitive Indo-European kweturtos (four) (from which the Ancient Greek gained τέταρτος (tétartos), the Sanskrit चतुर्थ (caturtha), the Proto-Balto-Slavic ketwirtas and the Proto-Germanic fedurþô).  It was cognate to quadrus (square), drawn from the sense of “four-sided”.  The Latin suffix –arius was from the earlier -ās-(i)jo- , the construct being -āso- (from the primitive Indo-European -ehso- (which may be compared with the Hittite appurtenance suffix -ašša-) + the relational adjectival suffix -yós (belonging to).  The suffix (the feminine –āria, the neuter -ārium) was a first/second-declension suffix used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  The nominative neuter form – ārium (when appended to nouns), formed derivative nouns denoting a “place where stuff was kept”.  The Middle English verb quarteren, was derivative of the noun.  Dating from the mid fourteenth century, vent was from the Middle English verb venten (to furnish (a vessel) with a vent), a shortened form of the Old French esventer (the construct being es- + -venter), a verbal derivative of vent, from the Latin ventus (wind), in later use derivative of the English noun.  The English noun was derived partly from the French vent, partly by a shortening of French évent (from the Old French esvent, a derivative of esventer) and partly from the English verb.  The hyphenated form quarter-vent is also used and may be preferable.  Quarter-vent is a noun; the noun plural is quarter-vents.  In use, the action of using the function provided by a quarter-vent obviously can be described with terms like quarter-venting or quarter-vented but no derived forms are recognized as standard.

1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz.

Like almost all US passenger cars, the post-war Cadillacs all had quarter-vents (“vent windows” or “ventiplanes” to the Americans) and on the most expensive in the range they were controlled by an electric motor, a feature optional on the lesser models.  This was a time when the company's slogan “Standard of the World” really could be taken seriously.  In 1969, with General Motors (GM) phasing in flow-through ventilation, Cadillac deleted the quarter-vents, meaning purchasers no longer had to decide whether to pay the additional cost to have them electrically-activated (a US$71.60 option on the 1968 Calais and De Ville).  GM's early implementation of flow-through ventilation was patchy so the change was probably premature but by 1969 the system was perfected and as good as their AC (air-conditioning), famous since the 1950s for its icy blast.    

The now close to extinct quarter-vents were small, pivoted, framed (or semi-framed) panes of glass installed in the front or rear side windows of a car or truck; their purpose was to provide occupants with a source of ventilation, using the air-flow of the vehicle while in motion.  The system had all the attributes of other admirable technologies (such as the pencil) in that it was cheap to produce, simple to use, reliable and effective in its intended purpose.  Although not a complex concept, GM in 1932 couldn’t resist giving the things an impressively long name, calling them “No Draft Individually Controlled Ventilation” (NDICV being one of history’s less mnemonic initializations).  GM’s marketing types must have prevailed because eventually the snappier “ventiplanes” was adopted, the same process of rationality which overtook Chrysler in 1969 when the public decided “shaker” was a punchier name for their rather sexy scoop which, attached directly to the induction system and, protruding through a carefully shape lacuna in the hood (bonnet), shook with the engine, delighting the males aged 17-39 to whom it was intended to appeal.  “Shaker” supplanted Chrysler’s original “Incredible Quivering Exposed Cold Air Grabber” (IQECAG another dud); sometimes less is more.  Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) suggested a good title for his book might be Viereinhalb Jahre [des Kampfes] gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit (Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice) but his publisher thought that a bit ponderous and preferred the more succinct Mein Kampf: Eine Abrechnung (My Struggle: A Reckoning) and for publication even that was clipped to Mein Kampf.  Unfortunately, the revised title was the best thing about it, the style and contents truly ghastly and it's long and repetitious, the ideas within able easily to be reduced to a few dozen pages (some suggest fewer but the historical examples cited for context do require some space).

The baroque meets mid-century modernism: 1954 Hudson Italia by Carrozzeria Touring.  

Given how well the things worked, there’s long been some regret at their demise, a process which began in the 1960s with the development of “through-flow ventilation”, the earliest implementation of which seems to have appeared in the Hudson Italia (1954-1955), an exclusive, two-door coupé co-developed by Hudson in Detroit and the Milan-based Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring.  Although some of the styling gimmicks perhaps haven’t aged well, the package was more restrained than some extravagances of the era and fundamentally, the lines were well-balanced and elegant.  Unfortunately the mechanical underpinnings were uninspiring and the trans-Atlantic production process (even though Italian unit-labor costs were lower than in the US, Touring’s methods were labor-intensive) involved two-way shipping (the platforms sent to Milan for bodies and then returned to the US) so the Italia was uncompetitively expensive: at a time when the bigger and more capable Cadillac Coupe de Ville listed at US$3,995, the Italia was offered for US$4,800 and while it certainly had exclusivity, it was a time when there was still a magic attached to the Cadillac name and of the planned run of 50, only 26 Italias were produced (including the prototype).  Of those, 21 are known still to exist and they’re a fixture at concours d’élégance (a sort of car show for the rich, the term an un-adapted borrowing from the French (literally “competition of elegance”) and the auction circuit where they’re exchanged between collectors for several hundred-thousand dollars per sale.  Although a commercial failure (and the Hudson name would soon disappear), the Italia does enjoy the footnote of being the first production car equipped with what came to be understood as “flow-through ventilation”, provided with a cowl air intake and extraction grooves at the top of the rear windows, the company claiming the air inside an Italia changed completely every ten minutes.  For the quarter-vent, flow-through ventilation was a death-knell although some lingered on until the effective standardization of AC proved the final nail in the coffin.

1965 Ford Cortina GT with eyeball vents and quarter-vents.

The car which really legitimized flow-through ventilation was the first generation (1962-1966) of the Ford Cortina, produced over four generations (some claim it was five) by Ford’s UK subsidiary between 1962-1982).  When the revised model displayed at the Earls Court Motor Show in October 1964, something much emphasized was the new “Aeroflow”, Ford’s name for through-flow ventilation, the system implemented with “eyeball” vents on the dashboard and extractor vents on the rear pillars.  Eyeball vents probably are the best way to do through-flow ventilation but the accountants came to work out they were more expensive to install than the alternatives so less satisfactory devices came to be used.  Other manufacturers soon phased-in similar systems, many coining their own marketing trademarks including “Silent-Flow-Ventilation”, “Astro-Ventilation” and the inevitable “Flow-thru ventilation”.  For the Cortina, Ford took a “belt & braces” approach to ventilation, retaining the quarter-vents even after the “eyeballs” were added, apparently because (1) the costs of re-tooling to using a single pane for the window was actually higher than continuing to use the quarter-vents, (2) it wasn’t clear if there would be general public acceptance of their deletion and (3) smoking rates were still high and drivers were known to like being able to flick the ash out via the quarter-vent (and, more regrettably, the butts too).  Before long, the designers found a way economically to replace the quarter-vents with “quarter-panes” or “quarter-lights” (a fixed piece of glass with no opening mechanism) so early Cortinas were built with both although in markets where temperatures tended to be higher (notable South Africa and Australia), the hinged quarter-vents remained standard equipment.  When the Mark III Cortina (TC, 1970-1976) was released, the separate panes in any form were deleted and the side glass was a single pane.

Fluid dynamics in action: GM's Astro-Ventilation.

So logically a “quarter-vent” would describe a device with a hinge so it could be opened to provide ventilation while a “quarter-pane”, “quarter-light” or “quarter-glass” would be something in the same shape but unhinged and thus fixed.  It didn’t work out that way and the terms tended to be used interchangeably (though presumably “quarter-vent” was most applied to those with the functionality.  However, the mere existence of the fixed panes does raise the question of why they exist at all.  In the case or rear doors, they were sometimes a necessity because the shape of the door was dictated by the intrusion of the wheel arch and adding a quarter-pane was the only way to ensure the window could completely be wound down.  With the front doors, the economics were sometimes compelling, especially in cases when the opening vents were optional but there were also instances where the door’s internal mechanisms (the door opening & window-winding hardware) were so bulky the only way to make stuff was to reduce the size of the window.  In some cases, manufacturers "solved" the problem by making rear side glass fixed which lowered their costs but it was never popular with customers.

1976 Volkswagen Passat B1 (1973-1980 (1988 in Brazil)) without quarter-vents, the front & rear quarter-panes fixed.

The proliferation of terms could have come in handy if the industry had decided to standardize and the first generation Volkswagen Passat (1973-1980) was illustrative of how they might been used.  The early Passats were then unusual in that the four-door versions had five separate pieces of side glass and, reading from left-to-right, they could have been classified thus: (1) a front quarter-pane, (2) a front side-window, (3) a rear side-window, (4) a rear quarter-pane and (5) a quarter-window.  The Passat was one of those vehicles which used the quarter-panes as an engineering necessity to permit the rear side-window fully to be lowered.  However the industry didn’t standardize and in the pre-television (and certainly pre-internet) age when language tended to evolve with greater regional variation, not even quarter-glass, quarter-vent, quarter-window & quarter-pane were enough and the things were known variously also as a “fly window”, “valence window”, “triangle window” and (possibly annoying architects) “auto-transom”, the hyphen used and not.

1960 Bentley S2 Continental Flying Spur by H.J. Mulliner (Design 7508 with Van Gerbig rear quarter-windows, left), the "Van Gerbig" quarter-window (centre) and the Flying Spur's (Six Light) standard rear quarter pane (right).

In 1960, cars with rear quarter windows which pivoted open were not uncommon so it may seem strange such a fitting can attract comment.  However, much prized in the rarefied world of coach-built Rolls-Royces and Bentleys are the little quirks and oddities which can make the bespoke creations “even more unique” (a phrase which will annoy the grammar Nazis but in this context it’s handy verbal shorthand).  H.J. Mulliner bodied an estimated 125 Bentley S2 chassis with the Flying Spur four-door sports saloon coachwork (Design 7508 “Six Light” saloon) but only three were fitted with the “Van Gerbig-style pop-open rear quarter lights (following Design 6110)”.  Of the three “Van Gerbig Flying Spurs” two were built with LHD (left hand drive) and one was RHD (right hand drive).  The otherwise unexceptional quarter-vents gained the name from Peter Van Gerbig (b 1934), a New York socialite who specified the feature in a Flying Spur he ordered for US delivery.

PA Vauxhall Velox (1957-1962): 1959 (left) and 1960 (right).  The one-piece rear window was introduced as a running-change in late 1959.

Before flow-through ventilation systems and long before AC became ubiquitous, quarter-vents were the industry standard for providing airflow to car interiors and it was common for them to be fitted on both front and rear-doors and frequently, the rear units were fixed quarter-panes (the lowering of the side window thing).  A special type of fixed quarter-pane were those used with rear windows, originally an economic imperative because initially it was too expensive to fabricate one piece glass to suit the “wrap-around styles becoming popular.  Improved manufacturing techniques let the US industry by the early 1950s overcome the limitations but elsewhere, the multi-piece fittings would continue to be used for more than a decade.

1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser (left), details of the apparatuses above the windscreen (centre) and the Breezeaway rear window lowered (right)

The 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser was notable for (1) the truly memorable model name, (2) introducing the “Breezeway" rear window which could be lowered and (3) having a truly bizarre arrangement of “features” above the windscreen.  Unfortunately, the pair of “radio aerials” protruding from the pods at the top of the Mercury’s A-pillars were a mere affectation, a “jet-age” motif decorating what were actually air-intakes.

Brochure for 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser promoting, inter-alia, the Breezeway retractable rear window.

A three-piece construction was however adopted as part of the engineering for the “Breezeway”, a retractable rear window introduced in 1957 on the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser.  It was at the time novel and generated a lot of publicity but the concept would have been familiar to those driving many roadsters and other convertibles which had “zip-out” rear Perspex screens, allowing soft-top to remain erected while the rear was open.  Combined with the car’s quarter-vents, what this did was create the same fluid dynamics as flow-through ventilation.  The way Mercury made the retractable glass work was to section the window in a centre flat section (some 80% of the total width), flanked by a pair of fixed quarter-panes.  After the run in 1957-1959, it was resurrected for use on certain Mercury Montclairs, Montereys and Park Lanes.

1958 (Lincoln) Continental Mark III Convertible (with Breezeway window).  The platform was unitary (ie no traditional chassis) which with modern techniques easily was achievable on the sedans and coupes but the convertible required so much additional strengthening (often achieved by welding-in angle iron) that a Mark III Convertible, fueled and with four occupants, weighed in excess of 6000 lb (2720 kg). 

Ford must have been much taken with the feature because it appeared also on the gargantuan “Mark” versions of the (Lincoln) Continentals 1958, 1959 & 1960, dubbed respectively Mark III, IV, & V, designations Ford shamelessly would begin to recycle in 1969 because the corporation wanted the new Mark III to be associated with the old, classic Continental Mark II (1956-1957) rather than the succeeding bloated trio.  The “Breezeway” Lincolns also featured a reverse-slanted rear window, something which would spread not only to the Mercurys of the 1960s but also the English Ford Anglia (105E, 1959-1968) and Consul Classic (1961-1963) although only the US cars ever had the retractable glass.  The severe roofline was used even on the convertible Continentals, made possible by them sharing the rear window mechanism used on the sedan & couple, modified only to the extent of being retractable into a rear compartment.

1974 Lincoln Continental Town Car with mini vents.

Very cool front quarter-vents on the last of the “big” Lincolns; in the explanatory document for dealers they were called “mini-vents” and they raised and lowered separately from the main side-glass.  Smoking was at the time socially acceptable (in some circles it seemed to verge on obligatory) and there was a lot of it about so that engineers devoted time to finding a better way for those wanting to “flick ash out the window” while running the AC wasn’t surprising.  Those visualizing a “flick” in progress might be surprised such a thing existed because in a modern vehicle (the body honed in wind-tunnels and computer simulations), what likely would happen is “blowback”.  That’s because aerodynamically the shape is efficient (with a “buffer zone” very close to the surface) and disrupting that by lowering a window shifts the inside pressure from positive to negative, ash thus prone to being “sucked-in”.  However, on something like a 1970s Continental (that conceptually can be imagined as one brick sitting atop two), the buffer zone can (depending on speed) extend as much as 3 feet (close to a metre) from the body.  This meant ash was flicked into the “buffer zone” and didn’t blowback into the cabin.  The vents didn’t last (another casualty of the quest for lower drag) but as late as 1985 they appeared as a US$72 extra and were known in the industry as the “smoker's option”.  For those who wish to discover the way things (for a brief, shining moment) used to be done, there’s nothing quite like the land yachts of the 1970s and although a breed in which specific efficiencies were rare, the mini-vents were an inspired design.

1967 Chevrolet Camaro 327 Convertible with vent windows (left), 1969 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 without vent windows (centre) and Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) & Jamie Lee Curtis (b 1958) in 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible during filming of the remake of Freaky Friday (2003), Los Angeles, August 2024.  Freakier Friday is slated for release in August, 2025).

Through Chevrolet's COPO (Central Office Production Order) system, 69 1969 Camaros were built with the ZL1, an all-aluminum version of the 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) big-block V8.  The COPO had been established as an efficient way to coordinate the production of fleet orders (law enforcement agencies, utility companies etc) for runs of vehicles in a certain specification but the drag racing community and others worked out it could be used also as “back-door” way to order small runs of cars with otherwise unavailable high-performance engines.  The Freakier Friday Camaro (badged as a 396 SS but several were used during filming including at least one with a roll-over bar for the stunt work) lacks the vent windows which were deleted from the range after 1967 when “Astro-Ventilation” (GM’s name for flow-through ventilation) was added.  In North American use, the devices typically are referred to as “vent windows” while a “quarter light” is a small lamp mounted (in pairs) in the lower section of the front bodywork and a “quarter-vent” is some sort of (real or fake) vent installed somewhere on the quarter panels.  As flow-through ventilation became standardized and AC installation rates rose, Detroit abandoned the quarter-vent which pleased industry because it eliminated both parts and labor, lowering the cost of production (the savings absorbed as profits rather than being passed to the customers).  On the small, cheap Ford Pinto (1971-1980), removing the feature saved a reported US$2.16 per unit but, being small and cheap, AC rarely was ordered by Pinto buyers which was probably a good thing because, laboring under the 1970s burdens of emission controls, the weight of  impact-resistant bumper bars and often an automatic transmission a Pinto was lethargic enough with out adding power-sapping AC compressor and plumbing.  Responding (after some years of high inflation) to dealer feedback about enquires from Pinto customers indicating a interest in the return of vents, Fords cost-accountants calculated the unit cost of the restoration would be some US$17.

1961 Maserati 3500 GTi with single (front) quarter-vent.

With the coming of flow-through ventilation and in increasing up-take of AC, the US manufacturers welcomed being able to eliminate quarter-vents because it meant fewer parts, less material and some minutes of labor saved during assembly.  The process also worked the other way which resulted in some Maserati 3500 GTs (Tipo 101, 1957-1964) being a rare example of a car with front and rear quarter-vents fitted to the same door.  Between 1947-1956, Maserati had sold various versions of its A6 as road cars but, with a design based on the principles used in racing as well as many components from the competition department, none were ideally suited to volume (or even series) production.  Noting the success Ferrari was enjoying with the road-going variants of their 250 series sports cars, Maserati resolved to emulate the business model and developed a platform which was something of a “parts bin special”, components from many European manufacturers bought “off the shelf” as a way of lowering costs; in the usual manner of the low-volume Italian specialists in the post war-era, coachbuilders were asked to submit designs for the bodywork and ultimately, the contract was awarded to Carrozzeria Touring of Milan.  Like Ferrari, Maserati used a derivative of one of their racing engines and although the 3.5 litre (213 cubic inch) straight-6 neither looked or sounded as exotic as Ferrari’s charismatic V12s, it was a reliable, well-proven unit with power and torque characteristics better suited to a wide range of buyers (many of whom appreciated the ease with which the straight-6 could be serviced).  As a relic of its days in Formula One and sports car racing, Maserati did have a V12 but it was bulky and in output offered little more than the six, certainly for road use (Remarkably, the ancient V12, heavily revised, briefly would enjoy some success in 1966 when it was one of the few fully-developed engines available when the new 3.0 litre (183 cubic inch) rules took effect in Formula One).

1962 Maserati 3500 GTi with front & rear quarter-vents.

Almost all the 3500 coupés were bodied by Touring using their patented Superleggera (super light) technique of construction, the method involving the fabrication of a structural framework of small diameter steel tubes that conformed to the body shape, this skeletal frame then covered by an aluminium outer skin.  The result was something both light and rigid. In the late 1950s, the 3500 GT was the right car for the time and was company’s first truly successful road car, the profits from the model for the first time putting things on a stable financial footing; almost 2000 coupés and some 250 Spyders (roadster), mostly by Carrozzeria Vignale, leaving the factory between 1957-1964 and the memorable, bespoke 5000 GTs (1959-1966) were developed on the same platform with Maserati 5.0 litre (301 cubic inch) (the original “big bore” units later replaced by “long stroke” versions better suited to road use).  In 1959-1962, the 5000 GT was probably the fastest car on sale but was so expensive only 32 were built.

1962 Maserati 3500 GTi; the quarter-vents were opened and closed using knurled, stainless steel knobs.

The 3500 GT was however a design of its time and although in some ways mechanically advanced, was in other aspects little different from the way things were done in the 1930s, including the cabin ventilation, the extent of the sophistication being the ability to wind down the windows (power windows were standard on all but the earliest models).  So, in a 3500, things could get hot and stuffy and, in late 1961, the first were built with air-flow augmented by second, rear-mounted quarter-vent.  What that did was emulate exactly the fluid dynamics of flow-thru ventilation and the reason it was done that way was simple economics: to add a pair of quarter-vents was simple and cheap whereas the addition of an integrated flow-thru ventilation system would be demanding of time and resources and thus expensive.  In one review, it was reported such an upgrade would cost more than three times the budget the factory allocated for the introduction of Lucas mechanical fuel-injection to replace the triple Weber carburetors.  The engineers did implicitly acknowledge the second quarter-vent was an unhappy, if necessary, compromise, all subsequent Maseratis including an integrated flow-thru system.  

Ford Australia’s early advertising copy for the XA Falcon range included publicity shots both with and without the optional quarter-vents (left) although all sedans & station wagons had the non-opening, rear quarter-panes, fitted so the side window completely could be lowered.  One quirk of the campaign was the first shot released (right) of the “hero model” of the range (the Falcon GT) had the driver’s side quarter-vent airbrushed out (how “Photoshop jobs” used to be done), presumably because it was thought to clutter a well-composed picture.  Unfortunately, the artist neglected to defenestrate the one on the passenger’s side.

Released in Australia in March 1972, Ford’s XA Falcon was the first in the lineage to include through-flow ventilation, the previously standard quarter-vent windows moved to the option list as RPO (Regular Production Option) 86.  Because Australia often is a hot place (and now getting hotter) and many Falcons were bought by rural customers, Ford expected a high take-up rate of RPO 86 (it was a time when AC was expensive and rarely ordered) so the vent window hardware was stockpiled in anticipation.  However, the new flow-through ventilation system was effective and the option didn’t prove popular but with a warehouse full of the parts, they remained available on the subsequent XB (1973-1976) and XC (1976-1979) Falcons although the take-up rate never rose, less the 1% of each range so equipped and when the XD (1979-1983) was introduced, there was no such option and this continued on all subsequent Falcons until Ford ceased production in Australia in 2016, by which time AC had long been standard equipment.

Great moments in tabloid journalism: Sydney's Sun-Herald, Sunday 25 June, 1972.  The Sun-Herald was then part of the Fairfax group, proving Rupert Murdoch (b 1931) can't be blamed for everything.

The infrequency with which RPO 86 was ordered has been little noted by history but on one car the fixtures did become a element which enabled a owner to claim the coveted “one-of-one” status.  In August 1973, near the end of the XA’s run, with no fanfare, Ford built about 250 Falcons with RPO 83, a bundle which included many of the parts intended for use on the stillborn GTHO Phase IV, cancelled (after four had been built) in 1972 after a tabloid newspaper generated one of the moral panics of which they're so fond, this time about the “160 mph super cars” it was claimed the local manufacturers were about to unleash and sell to males ages 17-25.  Actually, none of them were quite that fast but not often has the tabloid press been too troubled by facts and the fuss spooked the politicians (it's seldom difficult to render a "minister horrified").  Under pressure, Holden cancelled the LJ Torana V8, Ford the GTHO Phase IV and Chrysler reconfigured it's E55 Charger 340 as a luxury coupé, available only with an automatic transmission and no high-performance modifications.

The “quarter-vent XA RPO 83 GT”: 1973 Ford Falcon XA GT sedan (Body Identification: 54H; Model Code: 18238) in Calypso Green (code J) with Onyx Black (code B) accents over Black Vinyl (Code B) with 351 4V V8 (Code T) and four-speed manual transmission (Code L).  It’s the only one produced with both RPO 83 (a (variably fitted) bundle of parts left-over from the aborted GTHO Phase IV project) and RPO 86 (front quarter-vent windows).  In the collector market they're referred to usually as “the RPO83 cars”.

So in 1973 Ford's warehouse still contained all the parts which were to be fitted to the GTHO Phase IV so they’d be homologated for competition and although the rules for racing had been changed to ensure there was no longer any need to produce small batches of “160 mph [257 km/h] super cars”, Ford still wanted to be able to use the heavy-duty bits and pieces in competition so quietly conjured up RPO 83 and fitted the bundle on the assembly line, most of the cars not earmarked for allocation to racing teams sold as “standard” Falcon GTs.  Actually, it’s more correct to say “bundles” because while in aggregate the number of the parts installed was sufficient to fulfil the demands of homologation, not all the RPO 83 GTs received all parts so what a buyer got really was “luck of the draw”; with nobody being charged extra for RPO 83, Ford didn’t pay too much attention to the details of the installations and many who purchased one had no idea the parts had been included, the manual choke's knob the only visually obvious clue.  Ford made no attempt to publicize the existence of RPO 83, lest the tabloids run another headline.  It’s certain 250 RPO 83 cars were built (130 four-door sedans & 120 two-door Hardtops) but some sources say the breakdown was 131 / 121 while others claim an addition nine sedans were completed.  Being a genuine RPO 83 car, the Calypso Green GT attracts a premium and while being only RPO 83 with quarter-vent windows is not of any great significance, it does permit the prized “one-of-one” claim and not even any of the four GTHO Phase IVs built (three of which survive) had them.  In the collector market, the “one-of-one” status can be worth a lot of money (such as a one-off convertible in a run of coupés) but a Falcon’s quarter-vents are only a curiosity.

The Bathurst 1000 winning RPO 83 Falcon GTs, 1973 (left) & 1974 (right).

All else being equal, what makes one RPO83 more desirable than another is if it was factory-fitted with all the option's notional inventory and most coveted are the ones with four-wheel disk brakes.  Because the project was focused on the annual endurance event at Bathurst's high-speed Mount Panorama circuit, the disks were as significant as an additional 50 horsepower and a few weeks before the RPO 83 run they'd already been fitted to the first batch of Landaus, which were Falcon Hardtops gorped-up (what bling used to be called) with hidden headlights, lashings of leather, faux woodgrain and a padded vinyl roof, all markers of distinction in the 1970s; unusually, there was also a 24 hour analogue clock.  Essentially a short wheelbase, two-door LTD (which structurally was a Falcon with the wheelbase stretched 10 inches (250 mm) to 121 (3075 mm)), the Landau was not intended for racetracks but because it shared a body shell and much of the running gear with the Falcon GT Hardtops, Ford claimed Landau production counted towards homologation of the rear disks.  Fearing that might be at least a moot point, a batch were installed also on some of the RPO 83 cars and duly the configuration appeared at Bathurst for the 1973 event, their presence of even greater significance because that was the year the country switched from using imperial measures to metric, prompting the race organizers to lengthen the race from 500 miles (804 km) to 625 (1000), the Bathurst 500 thus becoming the Bathurst 1000.  RPO 83 Falcon GTs won the 1973 & 1974 Bathurst 1000s.

The “quarter-vent XB GT”: 1973 Ford Falcon XB GT sedan (Body Identification: 54H; Model Code: 18338) in Polar White (Code 3) with Onyx Black (code B) accents over Parchment Vinyl (Code P) with 351C 4V V8 (Code T) and four-speed manual transmission (Code L).  This is the only XB GT ordered with RPO 86 (front quarter-vent windows).

So with a large stock sitting in the warehouse, despite the dismally low take-up rate, the quarter-vents remained available when the XB Falcon (1973-1976) range was released and of the 1952 XB GT sedans sold (there were also 949 two-door Hardtops) a single buyer ticked the RPO 86 box.  Again, while granting the coveted “one-of-one” status, it’s not something of great significance although the car to which the pair of vents was fitted is one of the more desirable XB GTs because it was one of the 139 XB GTs built with the combination of the “4V Big Port” 351 V8 and four-speed Top Loader manual transmission.  The first 211 XB GTs received the fully-imported 351 4V Clevelands, “using up” what was in stock, subsequent models switching to the locally made variant.

US Built 351C-4V in 1973 XB Falcon GT.

Ford Australia had been importing from the US the high-performance 351C-4V V8 for use in the GT but when advised US production of that configuration was ending, the decision was taken to produce a local “high-performance” version of the 351 using the 351C 2V “small port” cylinder heads with “open” combustion chambers and a four-barrel carburetor; Ford Australia only ever manufactured the “small port” heads.  That means the Australian nomenclature “351C-4V” (small ports & four barrel carburetor) differs in meaning from that used in the US where it translated to “big ports & four barrel carburetor”.  It sounded a retrogressive step and while there was some sacrifice in top-end power, the antipodean combo turned out to be ideal for street use because the fluid dynamics of the flow rate through the smaller ports made for better low and mid-range torque (most useful for what most drivers do most of the time) whereas the big-port heads really were optimized for full-throttle operation, something often done on race tracks but rarely on public roads… even in the Australia of the early 1970s.  Still, some did miss the responsiveness of the high-compression US-built engine, even if the difference was really apparent only above 80 mph (130 km/h).  Ford's "2V" & "4V" nomenclature came to mislead some because the terms later were adopted to differentiate between cylinder heads using two (intake) and four (exhaust) valve configurations in the cylinder head(s).  Why Ford decided to use "venturi" rather than the more usual "barrel", "throat" or "choke" doesn't seem to be documented but it must at the time have seemed a good idea.  Ford Australia's hybrid interpretation of the Cleveland (the 2V heads & 4V carburetor combo) must have baffled the Americans which only ever assembled their 351s in matching form.      

The other ceremony that happened in Australia on 11 November, 1975: Ford Australia's photo shoot, Melbourne, Victoria.

Although only 2,901 XB GTs were produced, as the “halo” model it was an important image-maker and the XB range proved successful with almost 212,000 sold over its 34 month life (over 18 months in a generally more buoyant economy XA production had reached over 129,000).  Stylistically, the XB was an improvement over the poorly detailed XA and much was made (among Ford's claimed 2,056 changes from the XA) of the headlight’s high-beam activation shifting from a foot-operated button to a steering column stalk which, thirty-odd years on from the achievement of nuclear fission, doesn’t sound like much but motoring journalists had for years been advocating for “a headlight flasher”, having been impressed by the “safety feature” when being “flashed” on the German Autobahns by something about to pass at high speed.  More welcome still were the GT’s four-wheel disk brakes, acknowledged as good as any then in volume production.  The success of the XB coincided with Ford Australia’s two millionth vehicle leaving the assembly line so on Tuesday 11 November, 1975, Ford’s public relations office invited journalists and camera crews to a ceremony to mark the occasion, laying on the usual catering (including free cigarettes!) to ensure a good attendance.

Ford Australia pre-release publicity shot for the XB range release (embargoed until 15 September 1973).

1973 Ford Falcon XB GT Hardtop (Body Identification: 65H; Model Code: 18318) in Yellow Blaze (Code M) with Onyx Black (code B) accents over Black Vinyl (Code B) with 351C 4V V8 (Code T) and three-speed T-Bar automatic transmission (Code B).  Because the various side windows used by the Hardtop, Ute and Panel Van derivatives were different to fit the door and roof shapes, the quarter-vents were never offered on those and RPO 86 on the Hardtops was the dreaded vinyl roof in tan.  The sunroof (RPO 10) was a rarely (168 Falcons and 244 Fairmonts) specified option.

Unfortunately, the pictures of the dutifully polished XB Fairmont (a Falcon with some gorp) sedan didn’t generate the publicity expected because the next editions of the daily newspapers (there were then a lot of those and they sold in big numbers) had a more sensational story to cover: On that Tuesday, Sir John Kerr (1914–1991; governor-general of Australia 1974-1977) had dismissed from office Gough Whitlam (1916–2014; prime minister of Australia 1972-1975) and his troubled administration.  It was the first time the sovereign's reserve powers had been invoked to sack a prime minister since William IV (1765–1837; king of the UK 1830-1837) in 1834 dismissed Lord Melbourne (1779–1848; prime minister of the UK 1834 & 1835-1841) and although in 1932 Sir Philip Game (1876–1961; governor of NSW 1930-1935) had sundered the commission of Jack Lang (1876–1975; premier of New South Wales 1925-1927 & 1930-1932), the few Australians who pondered such things believed the days of meddling viceroys were done.  Sir John however proved the royal prerogative still existed (although paradoxically perhaps now only in the hands of a monarch’s representative rather than their own) and a certain XB Fairmont making a footnote in the history of Australian manufacturing passed almost unnoticed.