Decker

Decker (pronounced dek-er)

(1) Something (typically a bus, ship, aircraft, bed, sandwich et al), having a specified number of decks, floors, levels, layers and such (used usually in combination with a numerical or other expression indicating the number in the construction (double decker, triple decker, upper decker, five decker etc (sometimes hyphenated).

(2) As “table decker” an employee who “decks” (ie sets or adorns) a table used for entertaining (used also as a “coverer”) (archaic).  The idea lives on in the verb “bedeck” (to adorn).

(3) In boxing slang, a fighter with a famously powerful punch, able to “deck” an opponent (ie knock them to the canvas with a single punch).

(4) In historic naval slang, as “quarter-decker”, a label applied to officers known more for their attention to matters of etiquette or trivial regulations than competent seamanship or ability in battle.  It was an allusion to a warship’s “quarter deck” (the part of the spar-deck of a man-of-war (warship) between the poop deck and main-mast (and originally (dating from the 1620s), a smaller deck above the half-deck, covering about a quarter of the vessel’s LOA (length overall)).  In many navies, the quarter-deck was reserved as “a promenade for officers only”.

1785–1795: The construct was deck + -er.  Deck in this context was from the Middle English dekke (covering extending from side to side over part of a ship), from a nautical use of the Middle Dutch decke & dec (roof, covering), from the Middle Dutch decken, from the Proto-Germanic thakam (source also of the noun “thatch” and from the primitive Indo-European root steg & teg- (to cover) and the Old Dutch thecken, from the Proto-West Germanic þakkjan, from the Proto-Germanic þakjaną and related to the German Decke (covering, blanket).  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.  The noun double-decker was first used in 1835 of ships with two decks above the water line and this extended to land transport (trains) in 1867.  Decker is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is deckers.

Flight deck of the US Navy's Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70).

The reason ships, trains, buses, aircraft and such have "decks" while buildings have "floors” or “stories (or storeys)” is traceable to nautical history and the nomenclature used in shipbuilding.  English picked up “deck” from the Middle Dutch decke & dec (roof, covering) where the use had been influenced by the Old Norse þekja (to cover) and in early shipbuilding, a “deck” was the structure which covered the hull of the ship, providing both a horizontal “working surface” and enclosing the vessel, creating a space for stores, cargo or accommodation which was protected from the elements.  In that sense the first nautical decks acted as a “roof”.  As ships became larger, the nautical architects began to include multiple decks, analogous with the floors of buildings in that they fulfilled a similar function, providing segregated layers (ie the storeys in buildings) used for cannons, crew quarters, storage and such.  As the terminology of shipbuilding became standardized, each deck came to have a specific name depending on its purpose or position (main deck, flight deck, poop deck, gun deck etc).

Ford Mustang convertible (1965–1973) replacement floor pan (complete, part number 3648B) by Moonlight Drive Sheet Metal.

Until the nineteenth century, although the vehicles used on land became larger, they tended to get longer rather than higher but the advent of steam propulsion made possible trains which ran on railways and these could pull carriages carrying freight or passengers.  The first “double decker” versions appeared in France in 1867 and were described as voitures à imperial, (imperial cars) were used on the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest (Western Railway), the upper deck roofless and thus an “open-air experience”,  Rapidly, the idea spread and double-deck carriages became common for both long-distance and commuter services.  An outlier in the terminology is car design; cars have a floor (sometimes called the “floor pan”) rather than a deck, presumably because there’s only ever one.  In the narrow technical sense there have been cars with “two floors” but they were better understood as a “double-skinned” single floor and they were used for armor or to provide a space for something specialized such as hydrogen fuel-cells, the technique often called “sandwich construction”.

Boeing 314 Clipper flying boat cutaway (left) and front schematics of Boeing 747-300 (right).  Re-using some of an earlier design for a bomber which failed to meet the military’s performance criteria, between 1938-1941, Boeing built twelve 314 Clippers, long-range flying boats with the range to cross both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  Although used by the military during World War II, most of their service was with the two commercial operators Pan Am (originally Pan American Airways) and BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation).  Very much a machine of the pre-war age, the last Clippers were retired from service between 1946-1948, the advances in aviation and ground infrastructure built during war-time rendering them obsolete and prohibitively expensive to maintain.

Because train designers adopted the nautical terminology, it naturally came to be used also in buses, and aircraft, the term “flight deck” (where the pilot(s) sat) common even before multiple decks appeared on flying boats and other long-distance airframes.  The famous “bubble” of the Boeing 747 (1968-2023) remains one of the best known decks and although most associated with the glamour of first-class international travel, was designed originally as a freight compartment.  The multi-deck evolution continued and the Airbus A380 (2005-2021) was the first “double decker” with two passenger decks extending the full length of the fuselage (with cargo & baggage) carried in the space beneath hence the frequent description of the thing as a “triple decker”.

Lindsay Lohan contemplating three decker sandwich, now usually called a “club sandwich”.  Many menus do specify the number of decks in the clubs.

Deck widely was used of many raised flat surface which people could walk or stand upon (balcony, porch, patio, flat rooftop etc) and came to be used of the floor-like covering of the horizontal sections or compartments, of a ship, a use later extended to land transport (trains, busses etc) and in the twentieth century, to aircraft.  A pack or set of playing cards can be called a deck as (less commonly), can the dealt cards which constitute the “hand” of each player and the notion was extended to sets of just about anything vaguely similar (such as a collection of photographic slides). , Because slides tended to be called a “deck” only when in their magazine, this influenced the later use in IT when certain objects digitally were assemble for storage or use and in audio and video use when cartridges or cassettes were loaded into “tape decks”.  In print journalism, a deck is a headline consisting of one or more full lines of text (applied especially to a sub-headline).  The slang use in the trade of illicit narcotics to describe the folded paper used for distributing drugs was a US regionalism.  There are dozens of idiomatic and other uses of deck, the best known including “all hands on deck”, “swab the decks”, “hit the deck” “clear the decks”, “deck-chair”, “deckhand”, “deck shoes”, “flight deck”, “gun deck”, “observation deck”, “play with a full deck”, “promenade deck”, “re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”, “decked out”, “stack the deck”, “sun deck”, “top deck” & “to deck someone”.

Schematic of the Royal Navy’s HMS Victory, a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line, laid down in 1759 and launched in 1765, most famous as the flagship of Admiral Lord Nelson’s (1758-1805) flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805; it was on her Nelson was killed in battle.  Uniquely, after 246 years on the active list, she is the world's oldest naval vessel still in commission.  Although the term wasn’t in use until the 1830s, Victory was a “five decker” configured thus:

Orlop Deck: The lowest deck, mainly used for storage and ship's equipment.
Lower Gun Deck: The deck housing the heaviest cannons.
Middle Gun Deck: This deck contained another set of guns, slightly lighter than those on the lower gun deck.
Upper Gun Deck: The third level of guns, with even lighter cannons.
Quarterdeck and Forecastle: The uppermost decks, where the captain and officers usually directed the ship during battle.

The early meanings in English evolved from “covering” to “platform of a ship” because of the visual similarity and it’s thought the idea of a deck being a “pack of cards” (noted in the 1590s) was based on them being stacked like the decks of a multi-deck man-of-war (warship).  The tape-deck was first so described in 1949 an was a reference to the flat surface of the old reel-to-reel tape recorders.  The first deck chairs were advertised in 1844, an allusion to the use of such thing on the decks of passenger ocean liners and deck shoes were those with sturdy rubber soles suitable for use on slippery surfaces; the modern “boat shoes” are a descendent.  The old admiralty phrase “clear the decks” dated from the days of the tall-masted warships (the best known of which was the big “ship-of-the-line”) and was a reference to the need to remove from the main deck the wreckage resulting from an attack (dislodged masts, sails, spas etc) to enable the battle to be rejoined without the obstructions.  Being made of wood, the ships were hard to sink but highly susceptible to damage, especially to the rigging which, upon fragmentation, tended to fall to the deck.  It may have been a adaptation of the French army slang débarasser le pont (clear the bridge).

Ford 302 cubic inch (4.9 litre) Windsor V8 with the standard deck (left) and the raised deck 351 (5.8) (right).  In production in various displacements between 1961-2000, the 221 (3.6), 255 (4.2), 260 (4.3), 289 (4.7) & 302 (4.9) all used what came retrospectively to be called the “standard deck” while the 351 (5.8) was the sole “raised deck” version.

For decades, it was common for US manufacturers to increase the displacement of their V8 engines but means of creating a “raised deck” version, the process involving raising the height of the engine block's deck surface (the surface where the cylinder heads bolt on).  What this allowed was the use of longer connecting rods while using the original heads and pistons which in combination with a “longer stroke crankshaft” increases the displacement (the aggregate volume of all cylinders).  The industry slang for such things was “decker” and the technique was used with other block configurations but is best known from the use in the 1960s & 1970s for V8s because it’s those which tend to be fetishized.  The path to greater displacement lay either in lengthening the stroke or increasing the bore (or a combination of the two) and while there were general engineering principles (longer stroke=emphasis on more torque at the cost of reducing maximum engine speed and bigger bore=more power and higher engine speeds) but there were limitations in how much a bore could safely be increased including the available metal.  A bigger bore (ie increasing the internal diameter of the cylinder) reduces the thickness of the cylinder walls and if they become too thing, there can be problems with cooling, durability or even the structural integrity of the block.  The piston size also increases which means the weight increases and thus so too does the reciprocating mass, increasing friction, wear and has the potential to compromise reliability, especially at high engine speeds.

Increasing the stroke will usually enhance the torque output, something of greater benefit to most drivers, most of the time than the “top end power” most characteristic of the “big bore” approach.  In street use, most engines spend most time at low or mid-range speed and it’s here a longer stroke tends to produce more torque so it has been a popular approach and the advantage for manufacturers is that creating a “decker” almost always is easier, faster and cheaper than arranging one which will tolerate a bigger bore, something which can demand a new block casting and sometimes changes to the physical assembly line.  With a raised deck, there can be the need to use different intake and exhaust manifolds and some other peripheral components but it’s still usually a cheaper solution than a new block casting.  Ford’s “thinwall” Windsor V8 was one of the longest-serving deckers (although the raised-deck version didn’t see out the platform’s life, the 351 (introduced in 1969) retired in 1997).  Confusingly, during the Windsor era, Ford also produced other 351s which belonged to a different engine family.  Ford didn’t acknowledge the biggest Windsor's raised deck in its designation but when Chrysler released a decker version of the “B Series” big-block V8 (1958-1978), it was designated “RB” (Raised B) and produced between 1959-1979.

1964 AEC Routemaster double decker Bus RM1941 (ALD941B) (left), two sightseeing AEC Routemasters in Christchurch, New Zealand (centre) and one of the "new" Routemasters, London 2023 (right).

London’s red, double-decker busses are one of the symbols most associated with the city and a fixture in literature, art and films needing something with which to capture the verisimilitude.  The classic example of the breed was the long-running AEC Routemaster, designed by the London Transport Board and built by the Associated Equipment Company (AEC) and Park Royal Vehicles.  The Routemaster entered service in 1956 and remained in production until 1968, changed over those years in many details but visually there was such continuity that it takes an expert (and buses are a thing so experts there are) to pick the model year.  They entered service in 1956 and remained in regular service until 2005 although some were retained as “nostalgia pieces” on designated “tourist” routes until COVID-19 finally saw their retirement; since then, many have been repurposed for service around the world on sightseeing duties and other tourist projects.

Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) will leave an extraordinary political legacy which in time may came to be remembered more fondly than it now may appear but one of his most enduring achievements is likely to be the “New Routemaster” which had the typically bureaucratic project name “New Bus for London” but came to be known generally as the “Boris Bus”, the honor accorded by virtue of him championing the idea while serving as Lord Mayor of London (2008-2016).  In truth, the original Routemaster, whatever its period charm, was antiquated years before it was withdrawn from service and although the doorless design made ingress and egress convenient, it was also dangerous and apparently a dozen passenger fatalities annually was not uncommon.  The Borisbus entered service in 2012 and by 2024 almost 1200 were in service.

1930 Lancia Omicron with 2½ deck coachwork and a clerestoried upper windscreen (left) and a “three decker” bus in Pakistan (right).

The Lancia Omicron was a bus chassis produced between 1927-1936; over 600 were built in different wheelbase lengths with both two and three-axle configurations.  Most used Lancia's long-serving, six-cylinder commercial engine but, as early as 1933, some had been equipped with diesel engines which were tested in North Africa where they proved durable and, in the Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya and Algeria, once petrol powered Omicron chassis were being re-powered with diesel power-plants from a variety of manufacturers as late as the 1960s.  Typically of bus use, coachbuilders fabricated many different styles of body but, in addition to the usual single and double deck arrangements, the Omicron is noted for a number of two and a half deck models, the third deck configured usually as a first-class compartment but in at least three which operated in Italy, they were advertised as “smoking rooms”, the implication presumably that the rest of the passenger compartment was smoke-free.  History doesn't record if the bus operators were any more enthusiastic about or successful in enforcing smoking bans than the usual Italian experience.  For a variety of reasons, busses with more than 2.something decks were rare and the Lancias and Alfa Romeos which first emerged in the 1920s were unusual.  However, the famously imaginative and inventive world of Pakistani commerce has produced a genuine “three decker” bus, marketed as the “limousine bus”.  What the designer did was take a long-distance, double decker coach and use the space allocated usually as a luggage compartment to configure as the interior of a long wheelbase (LWB) limousine, thereby creating a “first class” section, the four rows of seating accessible via six car-like (ie limousine) doors.

Triple

Triple (pronounced trip-uhl)

(1) Threefold; consisting of three parts (matching or not).

(2) Of three kinds; threefold in character or relationship.

(3) Three times as great; multiplied by three (numbers or quantities in general).

(4) In international law or international relations, as triple entente, triple alliance etc, a treaty or some state of arrangement between three states.

(5) In baseball (also called the three-base hit), a hit which enables the batter safely to reach third base.

(6) In (ten-pin) bowling, three strikes in succession.

(7) In basketball, a three-point field goal.

(8) In curling, takeout shot in which three stones are removed from play.

(9) In musical time or rhythm, having three beats in each bar

(10) As triple crown, in various sporting competitions (Rugby Union, thoroughbred racing, motor sport et al), a (sometimes informal) acknowledgement of victory in three specific events (use based on the triple crown (sometimes as triple tiara) once used for the coronation of the Roman Catholic Pope).

(11) In internal combustion engines (ICE), an engine with three pistons or rotors.

(12) One of three; a third (obsolete and the source of some misunderstandings when found in historic texts).

(13) In programming theory, as Hoare triple, a description of how the execution of a piece of code changes the state of the computation in Hoare logic, consisting of (1) a command to be run, (2) a pre-condition that holds true beforehand, and (3) a post-condition that holds true afterwards.

(14) In mathematics, a sequence of three elements or 3-tuple.

1325-1375: From the Middle English triple (there was also þripell), from the Old French triple or the Medieval Latin triplare (to triple) from the Latin triplus (threefold, triple), from the primitive Indo-European tréyes.  Triple is a noun, verb & adjective, tripled is a verb, tripling is a noun & verb, triply is an adverb and triplet is a noun; the noun plural is triples.

In English, the Latinate multiplier “triple” is but one of many ways the value three (3) is in some way expressed or applied.  “Three” is the highest value, single digit cardinal number, as an ordinal it’s “third” (the Latinate ordinal is “tertiary”), the adverbial form is “thrice” (or the more mundane “three times”, as a multiplier the term is “threefold” (also as “three-fold”), the distributive is “triply”, the collective “tripartite”, “trio” or “threesome” (ménage à trois a popular version which has tended to limit the utility of “threesome” for other purposes), the multiuse collective “triplet”, the Greek or Latinate collective “triad”, the collective prefix (from both Latin & Ancient Greek (the latter also had “trito”)) was “tri”, the fractional expression is “third” (the Latinate fractional prefix was “trient-”, the elemental “thrin” & “triplet” and a period of three years is a triennium.  However, while there are weeks, fortnights & months, there’s no accepted term which express a measure of 21 days although three months is often described as “a quarter” although in the context of the nine month gestation associated with human pregnancy, the three month blocks are "trimesters" (first, second & third).  The use in obstetrics extended to education and in systems where academic years exist in four semesters (or terms), there is also the "fourth trimester".

Boss & Co SxSxS 16-bore triple-barrel shotgun #4690.

Originally an adjective, the noun emerged in the early fifteenth century.  The use in baseball dates from 1880 while the various uses of triple-deck, triple-decker etc (a development of the earlier double-decker) for cakes, sandwiches, bunk-beds etc all came into use in the early 1940s.  Triple-barrel carburetors were rare but did exist, Porsche for example using them on their flat sixes.  Rugby Union in 1883 was the first to use “triple crown”, awarded in the UK to the side which won the three “home countries” (England, Ireland, Scotland & Wales) matches.  That was based on the use of the papal triple crown (sometimes as triple tiara) then used for the coronation of the Roman Catholic Pope and was later picked up in US thoroughbred racing: The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes comprise the Triple Crown which was first officially awarded in 1919 although the term didn’t become widely used until the 1930s.  In motorsport, despite the popular perception, it’s never been an official award and many branches of the sport have their own triple crowns, most barely known outside of the small circle of their cognoscenti.  The three events which comprised the classic triple crown were (1) the Indianapolis 500 (first run in 1911), the 24 Hours of Le Mans (first run in 1923) and the Monaco Grand Prix (first run in 1929) and it’s been achieved only once.  That was by Graham Hill (1929–1975) who completed the set at Le Mans in 1972 and although he and others have suggested the Formula One World Championship should be included instead of the Monaco Grand Prix, the original arrangement seems still the accepted triple crown.

The Triple Alliance and Triple Entente were diplomatic arrangements formed in Europe in the decades prior to the First World War (1914-1918).  The Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary & Italy was signed in 1882 as a defensive system directed entirely against France.  It was an integral part of the series of treaties and agreements variously negotiated or imposed by Otto von Bismarck (1815-1989; chancellor of the German Empire (the "Second Reich") 1871-1890) and needs to be understood in the way it interacted with other cogs in the Bismarck machine.  That machine, a collection of inter-locking treaties and agreements (some of them secret) worked to further the interests of (1) the German Empire and (2) a general peace in Europe and was a good device in Bismarck’s capable hands but it proved lethal when less competent practitioners (who didn’t fully understand the implications) inherited the tool.  The Triple Entente was between France, Russia and the UK and was formed in 1907; in the narrow technical sense it was not a formal military alliance but an “understanding” between the three to counter the growing power of Germany and the Triple Alliance.  The Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria would become attached to the Triple Alliance with the onset of war although Italy initially remained neutral before (in what would continue to be an Italian tradition) switching sided in 1915 to join the Alliance.  Both the Alliance and the Entente played their parts in the escalating tensions which culminated in the outbreak of hostilities which would trigger the chain reaction of declarations of war.  Had Bismarck still been in Berlin, it’s unlikely things would have been allowed to assume their own momentum.

Six-pack: Lindsay Lohan re-imagined as one of identical triplets.

The word is used also as a modifier as required such as triple-barreled (used with three-element surnames and in various manufactured items but best known in shotguns), triple-headed (again widely used but probably still most associated with creatures from mythology, tripledemic (a term used in public health and epidemiology to describe the simultaneous outbreak of three epidemics or pandemics), triple fault (in computing a third (and fatal) error instance in a CPU attempting a graceful recovery from a double fault, triple jump (an athletic (track & field) event involving three different types of jump), triple goddess (a female deity who is either three goddesses in one or one who is triune (both three and one at the same time) and triple X syndrome (a chromosomal variation characterized by the presence of an extra X chromosome in each cell of a human female).

The papal triple tiara

Pius XII (1876-1958; pope 1939-1958) in the papal triple tiara, at his coronation, 12 March, 1939.

The papal triple tiara is a crown which has been worn by popes of the Roman Catholic Church since the eighth century.  Traditionally it was worn for their coronation but no pontiff has been so crowned since Saint Paul VI (1897-1978; pope 1963-1978) in 1963 and he abandoned its use after the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II, 1962-1965).  The name tiara refers to the entire headgear and it has used a three-tiered form since a third crown was added during the Avignon Papacy (1309–1378).  It's also referred to as the triregnum, triregno or Triple Crown.  In a piece of one- (or perhaps four-) upmanship, Suleiman I (Süleyman the Magnificent, 1494-1566, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire 1520-1566) commissioned from Venice a four tier helmet to show, in addition to the authority claimed by popes, he could add the symbol of his imperial power.  Often put on display as the centrepiece of Ottoman regalia to impress visitors, there's no documentary evidence the sultan ever wore the four layer tiara, crowns not part of the tradition and, fashioned from gold and gemstones, it would anyway have been extraordinarily heavy.

A representation of the triregnum combined with twocrossed keys of Saint Peter continues to be used as a symbol of the papacy and appears on papal documents, buildings and insignia.  Remarkably, there’s no certainty about what the three crowns symbolize.  Some modern historians link it to the threefold authority of the pope, (1) universal pastor, (2) universal ecclesiastical jurisdiction and (3) temporal power.  Others, including many biblical scholars, interpret the three tiers as meaning (1) father of princes and kings, (2) ruler of the world and (3) vicar of Christ on Earth, a theory lent credence by the words once used when popes were crowned:  Accipe tiaram tribus coronis ornatam, et scias te esse patrem principum et regum, rectorem orbis in terra vicarium Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi, cui est honor et gloria in saecula saeculorum (Receive the tiara adorned with three crowns and know that thou art father of princes and kings, ruler of the world, vicar on earth of our Savior Jesus Christ, to whom is honor and glory for ever and ever).

Lindsay Lohan triple-pack DVD offer.

Documents in the Vatican Archive suggest by 1130 the papal tiara had been modified to become a conventional (and temporal) symbol of sovereignty over the Papal States.  In 1301 during a dispute with Philip IV (Philip the Fair, 1268–1314, King of France 1285-1314), Pope Boniface VIII (circa 1230–1303; pope 1294-1303) added a second layer to represent a pope’s spiritual authority being superior to an earthly king’s civil domain.  It was Benedict XII (1285–1342; pope 1334-1342 (as the third Avignon pope)) who in 1342 who added the third, said to symbolize the pope’s moral authority over all civil monarchs, and to reaffirm Avignon’s possession.  A changing world and the loss of the Papal States deprived the triple crown of temporal meaning but the silver tiara with the three golden crowns remained to represent the three powers of the Supreme Pontiff: Sacred Order, Jurisdiction and Magisterium.

Not since 1963 has a pope worn the triple crown.  Then, the newly-elected Pope Saint Paul VI, at the end of his coronation, took the tiara from his head and, in what was said to be a display of humility, placed it on the altar.  In a practical expression of that humility, the tiara was auctioned; the money raised used for missionary work in Africa although, keeping things in house, the winning bidder was the Archdiocese of New York.  Popes Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) and Francis (b 1936; pope since 2013) received tiaras as gifts but neither wore them.  Benedict’s, in a nice ecumenical touch, was made by Bulgarian craftsmen from the Orthodox Church in Sofia, a gesture in the name of Christian unity.  Benedict would have appreciated that, having always kept a candle burning in the window to tempt home the wandering daughter who ran off to Constantinople.

The Mercedes-Benz triple rotor Wankel

The original (although there was a prototype rendered in the tradition of functional brutalism) Mercedes-Benz C111 with triple rotor Wankel engine (1969).

Triple cylinder engines in cars were something of a niche in the early post war years but of late they’ve achieve a new popularity, improvements in electronics and combustion chamber design meaning three cylinders can now achieve what once required four and even with an equivalent displacement their efficiency is inherently greater because of the reduction in internal friction.  Obviously compact, they’ve proved an ideal power-plant in hybrid vehicles.  One quirky triple was the Mercedes-Benz C111 which first appeared in 1969 with a 1.8 litre (110 cubic inch) three-rotor Wankel engine, something then thought to have a great future; it seemed a good idea at the time.  The C111, although produced in a small run and finished in some cases to production car standards was only ever a test bed, not only for the doomed rotary engine but also developments in suspension design, anti-lock braking (ABS; Anti-Bloc System) and safety engineering.  The gullwing body really was designed by an Italian-born stylist but so long had he been in Germany that Teutonic ways had entered his soul so the C111 was less lovely than what might have emerged from a studio in Turin but at the time it still caused a stir, even though finished in what the factory called “safety orange”, their standard high-visibility paint for prototypes and test-beds.  Later versions were fitted with a four-rotor Wankel, a variety of diesels and even a 4.8 litre (292 cubic inch) V8, the fastest of the rotaries said to be capable of 300 km/h (188 mph) while the V8 version (C111-II-D) in 1976 set a new closed-course record on the Nardò Ring in Italy, clocking in at 403.978 km/h (251.815 mph).

Triple carburetors

1966 Ferrari 275 GTB/C (Gran Turismo Berlinetta Competizione (denoting a grand touring coupé built to competition-specification)).

When submitting to the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the FIA; the International Automobile Federation) the application to homologate the 275 GTB/C for sports car racing, there was some glitch in the factory’s administrative processes because the document certifying the existence of a six-carburetor option for the 275 GTB wasn’t part of the paperwork enclosed.  That meant the 275 GTB/C could appear on the grid only with triple carburetors so to compensate, Ferrari had Weber produce a run of 40 DF13 units which in addition to their higher flow-rate featured lightweight magnesium bodies instead of the aluminium housing and were distinguished also by the distinctive, rearward-facing inlet trumpets.  As might be expected, original Weber 40 DF13s now command a premium price.  Twelve 275 GTB/Cs were built and the model was a turning point in being the last Ferrari built for racing to use the classic Borrani wire wheels.  Such had been the advances in tyre technology that by 1966 the grip generated transferred stresses so acute that in extreme conditions the spokes could break, a tendency exacerbated by the wheels’ additional width (7 inch front 7½ rear); there were accidents.  Such was the concern the two 275 GTB/Cs built as road cars were factory-fitted with aluminum-alloy wheels although the lovey Borranis continued to be made available for the later and much heavier 365 GTB/4 (Daytona, 1968-1973) and 365 GTC/4 (1971-1972).  In truth, using a 275 GTB/C on the road was a dubious proposition because as, a weight-saving measure, the body panels had been fabricated in thin 20-gauge aluminium; about half the thickness of the metal used for the road cars, it could be dented just by being touched and the dainty bumperettes (which offered at least some protection on the standard other variants of the 275 GTB) were wholly fake and merely affixed to the panels with no underlying structure.

1960 Jaguar XK150S 3.8 (left) and schematic of typical installation of Jaguar's auxiliary enrichment thermo-carburetor (right).

The last in the XK series (XK120 (1948-1954), XK140 (1954-1957) & XK150 (1957-1961)), the Jaguar XK150 was introduced in 1957 with a version of the twin carburetor 3.4 litre XK-Six used since 1948.  Increased weight had blunted the XK150's performance, something not wholly off-set by the slight increase in power coaxed from the engine and in 1958 the option of an "S" specification was made available as the XK150S, restoring the pace of the earlier cars, the raised output achieved with a revised cylinder head and triple carburettors (seen earlier in the 1950son the C-Type, D-Type & XKSS).  The final and fastest of the species was the 3.8 litre version of the XK150S, introduced in 1960; the engine in essentially this configuration would later be shared with the early E-Types (XKE) and Mark X, the triple carburetor arrangement carried when the 4.2 litre versions were released in 1964.  The triple carburetor engines were in 1968 withdrawn from the US market because the anti-emission regulations made the cost of certification prohibitive although, while in North America buyers had to be content with twin-carburetor units, the triples continued for RoW (rest of the world) vehicles exported to other places or sold in the home market.  When the last of the six-cylinder E-Types was made in 1971, that was the end of the line for the triple carburettor Jaguar.  It is however misleading to suggest the XK150S, E-Type and Mark X/420G were the only series-production Jaguars with triple carburetors because on some cars during the 1950s & 1960s, the factory fitted a smaller electromagnetically controlled “auxiliary carburetor” the main pair of carburettors.  The unusual arrangement acted as a choke but it was a complicated solution to a simple problem and, while performing faultlessly in testing, in the real world with gas (petrol) of varying quality and in different climatic conditions, it sometimes proved troublesome and there were owners who gave up and installed a conventional choke.

1966 Pontiac 2+2 421 HO Tri Power.

The early carburetors were all single throat (later also as “choke” or “barrel”) device and almost all were gravity-fed and it wasn’t until the 1930s the first two-barrel (then called a “duplex”) units appeared.  That design was such an advance because the duplexing allowed “fuel separation” manifolds which more accurately sent the mixture to the most distant cylinders; the adoption if this technology in 1934 allowed the output of Ford’s then new “flathead” V8 to rise from 60 to 85 horsepower (HP).  Buick in 1941 created what was, in effect, the first four-barrel system by installing two two-barrel units, the second becoming active only when the throttle had been opened far enough to operate the progressive linkage. The advantage being economy of operation in most circumstances, the additional fuel-burn required only on demand; it was an approach Detroit would use until 1971.  Four-barrel carburettors which operated on the same model appeared at scale in the 1950 and became an industry standard, some even installed in pairs on the highest-performance vehicles.  Ideal in many ways for the V8 layout, the problem for the manufacturers was the engines grew at a much greater rate than the carburetors and while the dual four-barrel configuration was suited to some, a better compromise for many was to use triple two-barrels.  Pontiac and Oldsmobile chose that path in 1957 and Chevrolet and Cadillac followed in 1958.  Ford flirted only briefly with the triple two-barrel before switching for a few years to dual four barrels for their high performance V8s and in 1958 three were bolted onto even the big, heavy 430 cubic inch (7.0 litre) MEL V8 although in that form it appeared only on one Mercury for that single season.  As higher-volume four-barrel carburetors became widely available, the rationale for the triple option faded and Chevrolet ceased use for all but the full-sized line and the Corvette; the last triple carburetor corvettes were built in 1969.  Chrysler was last to adopt the idea and the last to offer it, Trans-Am themed 340 cubic inch (5.5 litre) Plymouth ‘Cudas and Dodge Challengers made in 1970 while the 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) (advertised variously as “Six Pack” by Dodge and “Six Barrel” by Plymouth) was available in several models between 1969-1971 although its last appearance was in the Jensen SP, the last of which was built in 1973.

"Triple" is used of many things: Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Of taillights and exhaust tips 

1957 DeSoto Adventurer Convertible.

DeSoto's signature triple stacked taillights were a footnote in Detroit's macropterous era of the late 1950s, the style making possible the distinctive vertical arrangement.  Chevrolet would for years make triple taillights a trademark of their more expensive lines (although, apart from the odd special built for the show circuit, they resisted the temptation to add a third to the Corvette (the additional rear apertures on the abortive 1963 Corvette Grand Sport (GS) were for air extraction)) but they appeared always in a less memorable horizontal array.  DeSoto's motif was Chrysler's most successful use of the fins but it wasn't enough to save the brand  which was crowded out of the mid-priced market, not only by competition from General Motors (GM) and Ford but also by intra-corporate cannibalization, squeezed from below by Dodge and from above by Chrysler's new Newport line.  Demand for DeSotos collapsed and that so many were built in 1960 was simply to use up the large inventory of the few parts still exclusive to the brand.  The last of the line, heavily discounted, were not sold until well into 1961.

More sharing of stuff than before: 1960 DeSoto Fireflite four-door hardtop (left) and 1960 Chrysler New Yorker four-door hardtop (right).  Note the New Yorker's larger rear window.  Remarkably, the 1960 Chryslers offered two different designs of rear glass, the more panoramic described in the brochures as “Extra large rear window” which was standard on all two-door hardtops & New Yorker four-door hardtops and optional on the Saratoga and Windsor four-door hardtops.  It was a time when such a flourish was at the whim of designers whereas now it would require a separate programme of crash-testing several vehicles.

By 1959 the writing was on the wall for the once popular DeSoto and the 1960 range would prove its swansong, the last of the breed barely modified Chryslers and the only real hint of the past was the taillight's triple frets.  On the DeSoto the ridges were a modest attempt to retain brand identity but in optics such things have a purpose and are known as “Fresnel lenses” or “Fresnel ribs”, the name from French civil engineer Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827), remembered for his research into optics which led eventually to the near-unanimous acceptance of the nature of light being a wave (he was half-right but light was later proved to possess a wave-particle duality).  His more enduring Fresnel lens used the catadioptric (reflective/refractive) principle and what the “stepped” design did was extend the reach of lighthouse beams, doubtlessly saving the lives of many seafarers.  Fresnel’s invention was a refinement of the dioptric (refractive) stepped lens, a concept first published by the French cosmologist and mathematician Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) and Fresnel’s enhancements better distributed and directed the light, improving visibility from longer distances and a greater range of angles.

By 1960 (left) the DeSoto's taillights were a shadow of the way the triple-stack motif had been defined in 1959 (right): This juxtaposition is DeSoto Red Tail Lights in Black and White by Paul Ward.  Many designers probably will prefer the later interpretation but there's a charm to the triple stack. 

1969 Dino 206 GT by Ferrari in Azzurro Metallizzato (left), 1974 Ferrari 365 GT4 in Rosso Corso (centre) and 1975 Ferrari 365 GT4 BB in Verde Germoglio.

Unexpectedly, in the early 1970s, Ferrari had a flirtation with triple taillights and they doubled-down for the 365 GT4 BB (better known as the Berlinetta Boxer), adding a pair of triple tail-pipe apparatuses (thus a count of six rather than the usual four) for the 4.4 litre Flat-12.  Before the decade was out it must have been decided four of either was enough and the factory decided for a while (mostly) to stick to the classics: as designs like the Dino 206 GT illustrate, less can be more.  Since the BB however, Ferraris have also appeared with two and three tailpipes (some in the 1970s had but one) and in the twenty-first century many cars come with just a minimalist pair of taillights.  Ascetically, no arrangement works as well as the traditional template: four lights, four pipes.

The fetish of motorcycle exhaust systems

1980 Laverda Jota 1000 (3-into-2, far left), 1973 Suzuki GT750 "Water Buffalo" (3-into-4, centre left), 1972 Kawasaki 750 Mach IV (H2) (3-into-3, centre right) and 2017 MV-Augusta Dragster 800Rc (3-into-3, far right).

Triple cylinder engines have been a feature of motorcycle engines for decades and different manufacturers have taken various approaches to the exhaust systems, an item which exerts upon riders a special fascination.  It’s not unusual to fit single systems (3-into-one) but there are also some which “siamesed” the central header pipe, the derived pair joining the two outer pipes to duct into two mufflers.  Unusually, Suzuki for a while offered 380, 550 & 750 cm³ machines with 3-into-4 systems, the central header again “siamesed” the central header but had the novelty of terminating the two pipes in separate mufflers thereby emulating the appearance of a four-cylinder machine.  It was a curious arrangement which Suzuki abandoned and other manufacturers choose not to follow (although there had been after-market suppliers which concocted 2-into-4 systems which exchanged the "advantage" of "the look" for the drawback of additional weight and needless complexity).  Greatly at the time, Suzuki must have valued symmetry.

1973 Kawasaki H2 Mach IV 750 (left) and 1975 Triumph X-75 Hurricane (right).

Somewhat earlier, asymmetry hadn’t frightened Kawasaki which used pragmatic 3-into-3 engineering for their range (250, 350, 400, 500 & 750 cm³) of charismatic, highly strung two-strokes, one pipe to the left, two to the right and it was a distinctive feature which, although sometimes seen on the track, remains rare on the road.  In the same era, Triumph on their X75 Hurricane took 3-into-3 asymmetry to its logical conclusion, its three pipes arranged in a radically upswept stack on the right.  It looked dramatic and was much admired but didn’t catch on although there’s the odd revival, the Italian house MV-Augusta engineering a particularly aggressive interpretation on their Dragster 800Rc.

1969 Triumph Trident T150.

So there have been triple-cylinder motorcycles with exhaust systems configured as 3-into-1, 3-into-2, 3-into-3 & 3-into-4 but the early versions of the Trident and BSA Rocket 3 (1968-1975) offered a unique take on things with a design which had the three headers ducted into two mufflers, each of which terminated with three exhaust stubs so it can be described as a 3-into-2-into-6 which seems at least one layer of complication too many.  The styling on the early Trident and Rocket wasn’t well received and was revised for 1971.  Neither motorcycle was a commercial success because they arrived too late; had the pair been released in 1966 as was planned, things might have been better because genuinely they were fast and offered a level of refinement beyond the parallel twins which for years had been a mainstay of the British industry.  As it was, within weeks of their debut, Honda’s epoch-making 750-Four was on the market, a generation (or more) advanced compared with the competition and when the Kawasaki 900 later followed, even the (slight) performance advantage enjoyed by the British triples vanished.

2022 Triumph Rocket 3 GT in triple black.

When Triumph announced the Rocket 3 in 2019, most attention was on the numbers, the 2458 cm³ (150 cubic inch) triple being the largest displacement engine available in a motorcycle and the (163 ft-lb) (221 N⋅m) torque generated also industry leading, topping even the big Ducatis and the straight-six BMW.  Triumph since 2004 been at the top of the displacement tree with the Rocket III’s 2294 cm³ (140 cubic inch) engine and the updated model was very much a modernization exercise, something which may account for the decision to switch from the traditional Roman numerals to a digitally compliant “3”.  Being a triple there were of course options for how to handle the exhaust ducting and for the GT model Triumph opted for the asymmetric on the model of the old Kawasaki two-strokes rather than reprise its own X-75 Hurricane of nearly half a century earlier.  Unlike Kawasaki, Triumph didn’t make asymmetry a signature feature, choosing to route the third exhaust, almost inconspicuously, just under the swing-arm on the left side, a curious juxtaposition with the visual statement of intent made by the two on the right.  Doubtlessly the engineering behind the decision was sound and to add a bit of high-tech bling, some Rocket 3’s had carbon-fibre exhaust tips and most conspicuously they were carbon-fibre.