Doomsday

Doomsday (pronounced doomz-dey)

(1) In Christian eschatology, the day of the Last Judgment, at the end of the world (sometimes capital letter); the end of days; the end of times.

(2) Any day of judgment or sentence (sometimes initial capital).

(3) In casual use, the destruction of the world, since the 1950s, by means of nuclear weapons.

(4) As doomsday weapon(s), the device(s) causing the destruction of the world; anything capable of causing widespread or total destruction.

(5) Given to or marked by forebodings or predictions of impending calamity; especially concerned with or predicting future universal destruction.

(6) As Doomsday Clock, a symbolic warning device indicating how close humanity is to destroying the world, run since 1947 as a private venture by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Pre 1000: A compound from the Middle English domes + dai from the Old English construct dom (judgment) + dæg (day), dōmesdæg (sometimes dōmes dæg) (Judgment Day) and related to the Old Norse domsdagr.  Dome was borrowed from the Middle French dome & domme (which survives in Modern French as dôme), from the Italian duomo, from the Latin domus (ecclesiae) (literally “house (of the church)”), a calque of the Ancient Greek οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας (oîkos tês ekklēsías); doublet of domus.  Dom was from the Proto-West Germanic dōm and was cognate with the Old Frisian dōm, the Old Saxon dōm, the Old High German tuom, the Old Norse dómr and the Gothic dōms.  The Germanic source was from a stem verb originally meaning “to place, to set”, a sense-development also found in the Latin statutum and the Ancient Greek θέμις (thémis).  Dai had the alternative forms deg, deag & dœg all from the Proto-West Germanic dag; it was cognate with the Old Frisian dei, the Old Saxon dag, the Old Dutch dag, the Old High German tag, the Old Norse dagr and the Gothic dags.

In medieval England, doomsday was expected when the world's age had reached 6,000 years from the creation, thought to have been in 5200 BC and English Benedictine monk, the Venerable Bede (circa 672-735) complained of being pestered by rustici (the "uneducated and coarse-mannered, rough of speech"), asking him "how many years till the sixth millennium be endeth?"  However, despite the assertions (circa 1999) of the Y2K doomsday preppers, there is no evidence to support the story of a general panic in Christian Europe in the days approaching the years 800 or 1000 AD.  The use to describe a hypothetical nuclear bomb powerful enough to wipe out human life (or all life) on earth is from 1960 but the speculation was the work of others than physicists and the general trend since the 1960s has been towards smaller devices although paradoxically, this has been to maximize the destructive potential through an avoidance of the "surplus ballistic effect" (ie the realization by military planners that blasting rubble into to smaller-sized rocks was "wasted effort and bad economics").

The Domesday Book

Domesday is a proper noun that is used to describe the documents known collectively as the Domesday Book, at the time an enormous survey (a kind of early census) ordered by William I (circa 1028-1087; styled usually as William the Conqueror, King of England 1066-1087) in 1085.  The survey enumerated all the wealth in England and determined ownership in order to assess taxes.  Domesday was the Middle English spelling of doomsday, and is pronounced as doomsday.

Original Domesday book, UK National Archives, London.

The name Domesday Book (which was Doomsday in earlier spellings) was first recorded almost a century after 1086.  An addition to the manuscript was made probably circa 1114-1119 when it was known as the Book of Winchester and between then and 1179, it acquired the name by which it has since been known.  Just to clarify its status, the Treasurer of England himself announced “This book is called by the native English Domesday, that is Day of Judgement” (Dialogus de scaccario), adding that, like the Biblical Last Judgment, the decisions of Domesday Book were unalterable because “… as from the Last Judgment, there is no further appeal.”  This point was reinforced by a clause in the Dialogue of the Exchequer (1179) which noted “just as the sentence of that strict and terrible Last Judgement cannot be evaded by any art or subterfuge, so, when a dispute arises in this realm concerning facts which are written down, and an appeal is made to the book itself, the evidence it gives cannot be set at nought or evaded with impunity.”  It was from this point that began in England the idea of the centralised written record taking precedence over local oral traditions, the same concept which would evolve as the common law.

The Doomsday Book described in remarkable detail the landholdings and resources of late eleventh century England and is illustrative of both the power of the government machine by the late medieval period and its deep thirst for information.  Nothing on the scale of the survey had been undertaken in contemporary Europe, and was not matched in comprehensiveness until the population censuses of the nineteenth century although, Doomsday is not a full population census, the names appearing almost wholly restricted to landowners who could thus be taxed.  It was for centuries used for administrative and legal purposes and remains often the starting point for many purposes for historians but of late has been subject to an increasingly detailed textual analysis and it’s certainly not error-free.

The Doomsday Clock

The Doomsday Clock is a symbol that represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe.  Maintained since 1947 by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BOTAS), the clock was created as a metaphor for threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons.  On the clock, a hypothetical global catastrophe is represented as the stroke of midnight and BOTAS’s view of the closeness to that hour being reached by the number of minutes or seconds to midnight.  Every January, BOTAS’s Science and Security Board committee meets to decide where the second-hand of the clock should point and in recent years, other risk factors have been considered, including disease and climate change, the committee monitoring developments in science and technology that could inflict catastrophic damage.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

These concerns do have a long history in philosophy and theology but the use in 1945 of nuclear fission to create atomic weapons focused the minds of many more on the possibilities, the concerns growing in the second half of the twentieth century as the bombs got bigger and proliferated extraordinarily to the point where, if all were detonated in the right place at the right time, almost everyone on Earth would have been killed several times over.  At least on paper, the threat was real and even before Hiroshima made the world suddenly aware of the matter, there had been some in apocalyptic mood: Winston Churchill's (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) “finest hour” speech in 1940 warning of the risk civilization might “…sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science”.  It had been a growing theme in liberal interwar politics since the implications of technology and the industrialisation of warfare had been writ large by the World War I (1914-1918).

HG Wells’ (1866–1946) last book was Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), a slim volume, best remembered for the fragment “…everything was driving anyhow to anywhere at a steadily increasing velocity”, seemingly describing a world which had become more complicated, chaotic and terrifying than anything he had prophesized in his fiction. In this it’s often contrasted with the spirit of cheerful optimism and forward-looking stoicism of the book he published a few months earlier, The Happy Turning (1945), but that may be a misreading.  Mind at the End of its Tether is a curious text, easy to read yet difficult to reduce to a theme; in his review, George Orwell (1903-1950) called it “disjointed” and it does have a quality of vagueness, some chapters hinting at despair for all humanity, others suggesting hope for the future.  It’s perhaps the publication date that tints the opinions of some.  Although released some three months after the first use of atomic bombs in August 1945, publishing has lead-times and Wells hadn’t heard of the A-bomb at the time of writing although, he had in 1914 predicted such a device in The World Set Free.  In writing Mind at the End of its Tether, Wells, the great seer of science, wasn’t in dark despair at news of science’s greatest achievement, nuclear fission, but instead a dying man disappointed about the terrible twentieth century which, at the end of the nineteenth, had offered such promise.

In 1947, though the USSR had still not even tested an atomic bomb and the US enjoyed exclusive possession of the weapon, BOTAS was well aware it was only a matter of time and the clock was set at seven minutes to midnight.  Adjustments have been made a couple of dozen times since, the most optimistic days being in 1991 with the end of the Cold War when it was seventeen minutes to midnight and the most ominous right now, BOTAS in 2023 choosing 90 seconds, ten seconds worse than the 100 settled on in 2020.

The committee each year issues an explanatory note and in 2021 noted the influences on their decision.  The COVID-19 pandemic was a factor, not because it threatened to obliterate civilization but because it “…revealed just how unprepared and unwilling countries and the international system are to handle global emergencies properly. In this time of genuine crisis, governments too often abdicated responsibility, ignored scientific advice, did not cooperate or communicate effectively, and consequently failed to protect the health and welfare of their citizens.  As a result, many hundreds of thousands of human beings died needlessly”.  COVID-19 they noted, will eventually recede but the pandemic, as it unfolded, was “a vivid illustration that national governments and international organizations are unprepared to manage nuclear weapons and climate change, which currently pose existential threats to humanity, or the other dangers—including more virulent pandemics and next-generation warfare—that could threaten civilization in the near future”.  In 2023, the adjustment was attributed mostly to (1) the increased risk of the use of nuclear weapons after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, (2) climate change, (3) biological threats such as COVID-19 and (4) the spread of disinformation through disruptive technology such as generative AI (artificial intelligence).

The acceleration of nuclear weapons programs by many countries was thought to have increased instability, especially in conjunction with the simultaneous development of delivery systems increasingly adaptable to the use of conventional or nuclear warheads.  The concern was expressed this “may raise the probability of miscalculation in times of tension”.  Governments were considered to have “…failed sufficiently to address climate change” and that while “fossil fuel use needs to decline precipitously if the worst effects of climate change are to be avoided”, instead “…fossil fuel development and production are projected to increase”.  Political factors were also mentioned including the corrosive effects of “false and misleading information disseminated over the internet…, a wanton disregard for science and the large-scale embrace” of conspiracy theories often “driven by political figures”.  They did offer a glimmer of hope, notably the change of administration in the US to one with a more aggressive approach to climate change policy and a renewed commitment to nuclear arms control agreements but it wasn’t enough to convince them to move the hands of the clock.  It remains a hundred seconds to midnight.

The clock is not without critics, even the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) expressing disapproval since falling under the control of Rupert Murdoch (b 1931).  There is the argument that after seventy years, its usefulness has diminished because over those decades it has become "the boy who cried wolf": a depiction of humanity on the precipice of the abyss yet life went on.  Questions have also been raised about the narrowness of the committee and whether a body which historically has had a narrow focus on atomic weapons and security is adequately qualified to assess the range of issues which should be considered.  Mission creep too is seen as a problem.  The clock began as a means of expressing the imminence of nuclear war.  Is it appropriate to use the same mechanism to warn of impending climate change which has anyway already begun and is likely accelerating?  Global thermo-nuclear war can cause a catastrophic loss of life and societal disruption within hours, whereas the climate catastrophe is projected to unfolds over decades and centuries.  Would a companion calendar be a more helpful metaphor?  The criticism may miss the point, the clock not being a track of climate change but of political will to do something to limit and ameliorate the effects (everyone having realised it can’t be stopped).

Doom

Doom (pronounced doom)

(1) Fate or destiny, especially adverse fate; unavoidable ill fortune.

(2) Ruin; death.

(3) A judgment, decision, or sentence, especially an unfavorable one.

(4) In Christian eschatology, the Last Judgment, at the end of days.

Pre 900: From the Middle English dome & doome from the Old English dōm (a law, statute, decree; administration of justice, judgment; justice, equity, righteousness; condemnation) from the Proto-Germanic domaz (source also of the Old Saxon and Old Frisian dom, the Old Norse domr, the Old High German tuom (judgment, decree), the Gothic doms (discernment, distinction), possibly from the primitive Indo-European root dhe- (to set, place, put, do), (source also of the Sanskrit dhā́man (custom or law), the Greek themis (law) and the Lithuanian domė (attention)).  It was with the Old Norse dōmr (judgement), the Old High German tuom (condition) and the Gothic dōms (sentence).  A book of laws in Old English was a dombec.

Lidsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011. 

In all its original forms, it seems to have been used in a neutral sense but sometimes also "a decision determining fate or fortune, irrevocable destiny."  The Modern adverse sense of "fate, ruin, destruction" began in the early fourteenth century and evolved into its general sense after circa 1600, influenced by doomsday and the finality of the Christian Judgment. The "crack of doom" is the last trump, the signal for the dissolution of all things and the finality of the Christian Judgment Day, is most memorably evoked in the Old Testament, in Ezekiel 7:7-8.

(7) Doom has come upon you, upon you who dwell in the land. The time has come! The day is near! There is panic, not joy, on the mountains.

(8) I am about to pour out my wrath on you and spend my anger against you. I will judge you according to your conduct and repay you for all your detestable practices.

Doom Paintings

Doom paintings are the vivid depictions of the Last Judgment, that moment in Christian eschatology when Christ judges souls and send them either to Heaven or Hell.  They became popular in medieval English churches as a form of graphical advertising to an often illiterate congregation, dramatizing the difference between rapture of heaven and the agonies of hell, consequences of a life of virtue or wickedness.  During the English Reformation, many doom paintings were destroyed, thought by the new order rather too lavishly Romish.

Weltgericht (Last Judgement) (circa 1435)); Tempera on oak triptych by German artist Stefan Lochner (c1410–1451).

Football

Football (pronounced foot-bawl)

(1) As Association Football (soccer), a game in which two opposing teams of 11 players each defend goal-nets at opposite ends of a field, points being scored by placing the ball in an opponent’s net.

(2) As American football, a game in which two opposing teams of 11 players each defend goals at opposite ends of a field having goal posts at each end, with points being scored either by carrying the ball across the opponent's goal line or kicking it over the crossbar between the opponent's goal posts.

(3) By association (sometimes officially and sometimes as an alternative or informal name), any of various games played with spherical or ellipsoid balls, based usually on two teams competing (variously) to kick, head, carry, or otherwise propel the ball in the direction of each other's territory, the mechanisms of scoring varying according to the rules of the code (Rugby Union, Rugby League, Canadian Football, Australian Rules Football, Gaelic Football et al).

(4) The inflated ball (of various sizes and either spherical or ellipsoid in shape and historically made of leather but now often synthetic) used in football, the Rugby codes etc.

(5) Any person, thing or abstraction treated roughly, tossed about or a problem or (in the phrase “political football”) an issue repeatedly passed from one group or person to another and treated as a pretext for argument (often to gain political advantage) instead of being resolved.

(6) In slang (originally in the US military but now widely used), a briefcase containing the codes and options the US president would use to launch a nuclear attack, carried by a military aide and kept available to the president at all times (also as nuclear football, atomic football, black box or black bag) (by convention with an initial capital).

(7) As a modifier, football club, football ground, football fanatic, football pitch, football hooligan, football fan, football match etc.

(8) In commercial use, something sold at a reduced or special price.

1350-1400: From the Middle English fut ball, fotbal & footbal, the construct being foot + ball, the name derived from the games which involved kicking the ball.  Foot was from the Middle English fut, fot, fote & foot, from the Old English fōt, from the Proto-West Germanic fōt, from the Proto-Germanic fōts, from the primitive Indo-European pṓds.  Ball was from the Middle English bal, ball & balle, from the (unattested) Old English beall & bealla (round object, ball) or the Old Norse bǫllr (a ball), both from the Proto-Germanic balluz & ballô (ball), from the primitive Indo-European boln- (bubble), from the primitive Indo-European bel- (to blow, inflate, swell).  It was cognate with the Old Saxon ball, the Dutch bal, the Old High German bal & ballo (from which Modern German gained Ball (ball) & Ballen (bale)).  The related forms in Romance languages are borrowings from the Germanic.

Lindsay Lohan in “gridiron” gear, Life Size (2000).

Apparently in international use now less common than once (“NFL” now preferred), the term "gridiron" remains frequently used in the US describe American football including the NFL (National Football League).  The word refers to the marking originally painted on the field: two intersecting series of parallel lines running the length & breadth of the field which produced a cross-hatched effect recalling the gridirons used on stoves.  After the 1919-1920 season, the grid was replaced with yard lines still in use today but the name has stuck.  In the thirteenth century it was an instrument of torture on which victims chained before being burned by fire and in the same vein (though less gruesomely), in the 1500s it described a similar wrought grate on which meat and fish were broiled over hot coals.  In modern use, it's used of lattice-like structures (though not necessarily of iron) including in ship repair where grid irons are used as an open frame which supports vessels for examination, cleaning and repairs when out of the water and in the slang of live theatre, it's a raised framework from which lighting is suspended.  An interesting (though no longer permitted) use emerged in twentieth century land law in New Zealand where "to grid iron" was to purchase land with the boundaries drawn so remaining adjacent parcels were smaller than the minimum which could be registered in fee simple (freehold), thus preserving the buyers view and excluding the threat of undesirable neighbors.

In Australia & New Zealand, “footy” is the common slang used in all of the four major codes.  Slang terms for footballs include moleskin, pill, peanut, pigskin, pillow & pineapple.  The names are an allusion to the shape and that so many start with the letter “p” is thought mere coincidence.  The figurative sense of “something idly kicked around, something subject to hard use and many vicissitudes” which is the ancestor of the “political football” was in use as early as the 1530s while the US military slang referencing the portable device with which a US president emerged in the 1960s.  Football (in the sense of soccer) is called “the world game”: and like the game, forms of the word have spread to many languages including the Arabic كرة القدم‎ (calque), the Czech fotbal, the Dutch: voetbal (calque), the German Fußball (Fussball) (calque), the Hebrew כדורגל‎ (calque), the Japanese フットボール (futtobōru), the Korean 풋볼 (putbol), the Maltese futbol, the Portuguese futebol, the Romanian fotbal, the Russian футбо́л (futból), the Spanish fútbol, the Thai ฟุตบอล (fút-bɔn) and the Turkish futbol.  Football is a noun & verb, footballer & footballization are nouns, footballing is a verb & adjective and footballed is a verb; the noun plural is footballs.

The Nuclear Football

US Navy Commander walking across the White House lawn, carrying the “Football” onto Marine One (the presidential helicopter).

The “Football” (also as nuclear football, atomic football, black box or black bag) is a briefcase (reputedly made of a reinforced material with a black leather skin) which a military aide to the US president carries so at all times when the commander-in-chief is remote from designated command centres (such as the White House Situation Room), orders to the military can be issued including the command to authorize the launch of nuclear weapons.  The Football contains lists of the codes needed to transmit the launch order and the essential technical documentation required to determine the form a nuclear attack should assume.  Apparently, there’s also a check-list of the domestic measures immediately to be executed in the event of an attack including the imposition of martial law and the closing of US airspace to civilian aviation.  This was an outgrowth of the “SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan) Execution Handbook which codified in one publication all essential information needed in the circumstances, something developed during the administration of John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) but in the way of things familiar to those acquainted with bureaucratic inertia, the physical size (and thus the weight) of the contents grew and there are reports the package now weights in excess of 20 kg (45 lb).  Of course, everything could be contained on a single USB pen-drive (and the Football presumably includes a number of these) but because it’s something of a doomsday device, everything needs to be accessible in a WCS (worst case scenario) in which electronic devices are for whatever reason unable to be used.

Set of the War Room in Dr Strangelove (1964).  It’s presumably apocryphal but it’s said Ronald Reagan (1911-2004, US president 1981-1989) remarked his only disappointment upon becoming president was that the White House Situation Room was more like something in which an insurance company might conduct seminars than the film’s dramatic War Room set.

The first known use of something recognizable as a “Football” was during the second administration (1957-1961) of Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961) although in those days it contained purely the vital information and none of the independent communications connectivity which apparently was added as early as 1977.  Quite when first it was called the Football isn’t known but the term was in use during the Kennedy years and all agree it was based on the idea of the football “being passed” as happens in the game, the link being that it’s carried 24/7/365 by an on-duty military officer.  There’s also the story that “Football” was a refinement (possibly a euphemistic one) of the earlier (and also unattributed) nickname “dropkick”.  In the game of football the dropkick can be used to transfer the ball to another player and it was used as a codename in the film Dr Strangelove, a dark comedy of nuclear destruction.  However whether art imitated life or it was the other way around isn’t known and Football anyway prevailed.

The arrival of the Football in Hiroshima in May 2023 with Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) who was in town for the Group of Seven (G7) meeting was noted on Japanese Social Media although it wasn’t the first time the Football had been in the city which was the target of the first nuclear attack, Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) visiting in 2016.  By the time President Obama stepped off the Air Force One, the Football enabled him to unleash within 30 minutes the equivalent of over 22,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs which, while rather less than in 1969 when the when the size of the US nuclear arsenal peaked, was still quite an increase on the two deliverable weapons available in August 1945.  The thermo-nuclear (fusion) devices in use since the 1950s were also a thousand-fold (and beyond) more powerful than the fission bombs deployed against Hiroshima and Nagasaki although interestingly, while for decades the Hiroshima bomb was a genuine one-off (using uranium rather than plutonium), analysts believe in recent years uranium has again become fashionable with recent adopters such as Pakistan and the DPRK (North Korea) building them because of the relative simplicity of construction.

Gap

Gap (pronounced gap)

(1) A break or opening, as in a fence, wall, or military line; breach; an opening that implies a breach or defect (vacancy, deficit, absence, or lack).

(2) An empty space or interval; interruption in continuity; hiatus.

(3) A wide divergence or difference; disparity

(4) A difference or disparity in attitudes, perceptions, character, or development, or a lack of confidence or understanding, perceived as creating a problem.

(5) A deep, sloping ravine or cleft through a mountain ridge.

(6) In regional use (in most of the English-speaking world and especially prominent in the US), a mountain pass, gorge, ravine, valley or similar geographical feature (also in some places used of a sheltered area of coast between two cliffs and often applied in locality names).

(7) In aeronautics, the distance between one supporting surface of an airplane and another above or below it.

(8) In electronics, a break in a magnetic circuit that increases the inductance and saturation point of the circuit.

(9) In various field sports (baseball, cricket, the football codes etc), those spaces between players which afford some opportunity to the opposition.

(10) In genetics, an un-sequenced region in a sequence alignment.

(11) In slang (New Zealand), suddenly to depart.

(12) To make a gap, opening, or breach in.

(13) To come open or apart; form or show a gap.

1350–1400: From the Middle English gap & gappe (an opening in a wall or hedge; a break, a breach), from Old Norse gap (gap, empty space, chasm) akin to the Old Norse gapa (to open the mouth wide; to gape; to scream), from the Proto-Germanic gapōną, from the primitive Indo-European root ghieh (to open wide; to yawn, gape, be wide open) and related to the Middle Dutch & Dutch gapen, the German gaffen (to gape, stare), the Danish gab (an expanse, space, gap; open mouth, opening), the Swedish gap & gapa and the Old English ġeap (open space, expanse).  Synonyms for gap can include pause, interstice, break, interlude, lull but probably not lacuna (which is associated specifically with holes).  Gap is a noun & verb, gapped & gapping are verbs, Gapless & gappy are adjectives; the noun plural is gaps.

Lindsay Lohan demonstrates a startled gape, MTV Movie-Awards, Gibson Amphitheatre, Universal City, California, June 2010.

The use to describe natural geographical formations (“a break or opening between mountains” which later extended to “an unfilled space or interval, any hiatus or interruption”) emerged in the late fifteenth century and became prevalent in the US, used of deep breaks or passes in a long mountain chain (especially one through which a waterway flows) and often used in locality names.  The use as a transitive verb (to make gaps; to gap) evolved from the noun and became common in the early nineteenth century as the phrases became part of the jargon of mechanical engineering and metalworking (although in oral use the forms may long have existed).  The intransitive verb (to have gaps) is documented only since 1948.  The verb gape dates from the early thirteenth century and may be from the Old English ġeap (open space, expanse) but most etymologists seem to prefer a link with the Old Norse gapa (to open the mouth wide; to gape; to scream); it was long a favorite way of alluding to the expressions thought stereotypical of “idle curiosity, listlessness, or ignorant wonder of bumpkins and other rustics” and is synonymous with “slack-jawed yokels”).  The adjective gappy (full of gaps; inclined to be susceptible to gaps opening) dates from 1846.  The adjectival use gap-toothed (having teeth set wide apart) has been in use since at least the 1570s, but earlier, Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) had used “gat-toothed” for the same purpose, gat from the Middle English noun gat (opening, passage) from the Old Norse gat and cognate with gate.

Lindsay Lohan demonstrates her admirable thigh gap, November 2013.

The “thigh gap” seems first to have been documented in 2012 but gained critical mass on the internet in 2014 when it became of those short-lived social phenomenon which produced a minor moral panic.  “Thigh gap” described the empty space between the inner thighs of a women when standing upright with feet touching; a gap was said to be good and the lack of a gap bad.  Feminist criticism noted it was not an attribute enjoyed by a majority of mature human females and it thus constituted just another of the “beauty standards” imposed on women which were an unrealizable goal for the majority.  The pro-ana community ignored this critique and thinspiration (thinspo) bloggers quickly added annotated images and made the thigh gap and essential aspect of female physical attractiveness.  

A walking, talking credibility gap: crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013).

In English, gap has been prolific in the creation of phrases & expressions.  The “generation gap” sounds modern and as a phrase it came into wide use only in the 1960s in reaction to the twin constructs of “teenagers” and the “counter-culture” but the concept has been documented since antiquity and refers to a disconnect between youth and those older, based on different standards of behavior, dress, artistic taste and social mores.  The term “technology gap” was created in the early 1960s and was from economics, describing the various implications of a nation’s economy gaining a competitive advantage over others by the creation or adoption of certain technologies.  However, the concept was familiar to militaries which had long sought to quantify and rectify any specific disadvantage in personnel, planning or materiel they might suffer compared to their adversaries; these instances are described in terms like “missile gap”, “air gap”, “bomber gap”, “megaton gap” et al (and when used of materiel the general term “technology deficit” is also used).  Rearmament is the usual approach but there can also be “stop gap” solutions which are temporary (often called “quick & dirty” (Q&D)) fixes which address an immediate crisis without curing the structural problem.  For a permanent (something often illusory in military matters) remedy for a deficiency, one is said to “bridge the gap”, “gap-fill” or “close the gap”.  The phrase “stop gap” in the sense of “that which fills a hiatus, an expedient in an emergency” appears to date from the 1680s and may have been first a military term referring to a need urgently to “plug a gap” in a defensive line, “gap” used by armies in this sense since the 1540s.  The use as an adjective dates from the same time in the sense of “filling a gap or pause”.  A “credibility gap” is discrepancy between what’s presented as reality and a perception of what reality actually is; it’s applied especially to the statements of those in authority (politicians like crooked Hillary Clinton the classic but not the only examples).  “Pay gap” & “gender gap” are companion terms used most often in labor-market economics to describe the differences in aggregate or sectoral participation and income levels between a baseline group (usually white men) and others who appear disadvantaged.

“Gap theorists” (known also as “gap creationists”) are those who claim the account of the Earth and all who inhabit the place being created in six 24 hour days (as described in the Book of Genesis in the Bible’s Old Testament) literally is true but that there was a gap of time between the two distinct creations in the first and the second verses of Genesis.  What this allows is a rationalization of modern scientific observation and analysis of physical materials which have determined the age of the planet.  This hypothesis can also be used to illustrate the use of the phrase “credibility gap”.  In Australia, gap is often used to refer to the (increasingly large) shortfall between the amount health insurance funds will pay compared with what the health industry actually charges; the difference, paid by the consumer, (doctors still insist on calling them patients) is the gap (also called the “gap fee”).  In Australia, the term “the gap” has become embedded in the political lexicon to refer to the disparity in outcomes between the indigenous and non-indigenous communities in fields such as life expectancy, education, health, employment, incarceration rates etc.  By convention, it can be used only to refer to the metrics which show institutional disadvantage but not other measures where the differences are also striking (smoking rates, crime rates, prevalence of domestic violence, drug & alcohol abuse etc) and it’s thus inherently political.  Programmes have been designed and implemented with the object of “closing the gap”; the results have been mixed.

Opinion remains divided on the use of platinum-tipped spark plugs in the Mercedes-Benz M100 (6.3 & 6.9) V8.

A “spark gap” is the space between two conducting electrodes, filled usually with air (or in specialized applications some other gas) and designed to allow an electric spark to pass between the two.  One of the best known spark gaps is that in the spark (or sparking) plug which provides the point of ignition for the fuel-air mixture in internal combustion engines (ICE).  Advances in technology mean fewer today are familiar with the intricacies of spark plugs, once a familiar (and often an unwelcome) sight to many.  The gap in a spark plug is the distance between the center and ground electrode (at the tip) and the size of the gap is crucial in the efficient operation of an ICE.  The gap size, although the differences would be imperceptible to most, is not arbitrary and is determined by the interplay of the specifications of the engine and the ignition system including (1) the compression ratio (low compression units often need a larger gap to ensure a larger spark is generated), (2) the ignition system, high-energy systems usually working better with a larger gap, (3) the materials used in the plug’s construction (the most critical variable being their heat tolerance); because copper, platinum, and iridium are used variously, different gaps are specified to reflect the variations in thermal conductivity and the temperature range able to be endured and (4) application, high performance engines or those used in competition involving sustained high-speed operation often using larger gaps to ensure a stronger and larger spark.

Kennedy, Khrushchev and the missile gap

The “missile gap” was one of the most discussed threads in the campaign run by the Democratic Party’s John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) in the 1960 US presidential election in which his opponent was the Republican Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974).  The idea there was a “missile gap” was based on a combination of Soviet misinformation, a precautionary attitude by military analysts in which the statistical technique of extrapolation was applied on the basis of a “worst case scenario” and blatant empire building by the US military, notably the air force (USAF), anxious not to surrender to the navy their pre-eminence in the hierarchy of nuclear weapons delivery systems.  It’s true there was at the time a missile gap but it was massively in favor of the US which possessed several dozen inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM) while the USSR had either four or six, depending on the definition used.  President Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961), a five-star general well acquainted with the intrigues of the military top brass, was always sceptical about the claims and had arranged the spy flights which confirmed the real count but was constrained from making the information public because of the need to conceal his source of intelligence.  Kennedy may actually have known his claim was incorrect but, finding it resonated with the electorate, continued to include it in his campaigning, knowing the plausibility was enhanced in a country where people were still shocked by the USSR having in 1957 launched Sputnik I, the first ever earth-orbiting satellite.  Sputnik had appeared to expose a vast gap between the scientific capabilities of the two countries, especially in the matter of big missiles. 

President Kennedy & comrade Khrushchev at their unproductive summit meeting, Vienna, June 1961.

Fake gaps in such matters were actually nothing new.  Some years earlier, before there were ICBMs so in any nuclear war the two sides would have to have used aircraft to drop bombs on each other (al la Hiroshima & Nagasaki in 1945), there’d been a political furore about the claim the US suffered a “bomber gap” and would thus be unable adequately to respond to any attack.  In truth, by a simple sleight of hand little different to that used by Nazi Germany to 1935 to convince worried British politicians that the Luftwaffe (the German air force) was already as strong as the Royal Air Force (RAF), Moscow had greatly inflated the numbers and stated capability of their strategic bombers, a perception concerned US politicians were anxious to believe.  The USAF would of course be the recipient of the funds needed to build the hundreds (the US would end up building thousands) of bombers needed to equip all those squadrons and their projections of Soviet strength were higher still.  If all of this building stuff to plug non-existent gaps had happened in isolation it would have been wasteful of money and natural resources which was bad enough but this hardware made up the building blocks of nuclear strategy; the Cold war was not an abstract exercise where on both sides technicians with clipboards walked from silo to silo counting warheads.

Instead, the variety of weapons, their different modes of delivery (from land, sea, undersea and air), their degrees of accuracy and their vulnerability to counter-measures was constantly calculated to assess their utility as (1) deterrents to an attack, (2) counter-offensive weapons to respond to an attack or (3) first-strike weapons with which to stage a pre-emptive or preventative attack.  In the Pentagon, the various high commands and the burgeoning world of the think tanks, this analysis was quite an industry and it had to also factor in the impossible: working out how the Kremlin would react.  In other words, what the planners needed to do was create a nuclear force which was strong enough to deter an attack yet not seem to be such a threat that it would encourage an attack and that only scratched the surface of the possibilities; each review (and there were many) would produce detailed study documents several inches thick.

US Navy low-level photograph spy of San Cristobal medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) site #1, Cuba, 23 October, 1962.

In October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the somewhat slimmer nuclear war manuals synthesized from those studies were being read with more interest than usual.  It was a tense situation and had Kennedy and comrade Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) not agreed to a back-channel deal, the US would probably have attacked Cuba in some manner, not knowing three divisions of the Red Army were stationed there to protect the Soviet missiles and that would have been a state of armed conflict which could have turned into some sort of war.  As it was, under the deal, Khrushchev withdrew the missiles from Cuba in exchange for Kennedy’s commitment not to invade Cuba and withdraw 15 obsolescent nuclear missiles from Turkey, the stipulation being the Turkish component must be kept secret.  That secrecy colored for years the understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the role of the US nuclear arsenal played in influencing the Kremlin.  The story was that the US stayed resolute, rattled the nuclear sabre and that was enough to force the Soviet withdrawal.  One not told the truth was Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) who became president after Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and historians have attributed his attitude to negotiation during the Vietnam War to not wishing to be unfavorably compared to his predecessor who, as Dean Rusk (1909–1994; US secretary of state 1961-1969) put it, stood “eyeball to eyeball” with Khrushchev and “made him blink first”.  The existence of doomsday weapon of all those missiles would distort Soviet and US foreign policy for years to come.

Corvette

Corvette (pronounced kawr-vet)

(1) In historic admiralty use, a flush-decked warship of the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries having a single tier of guns and one size down from a frigate; in the US Navy called a sloop of war (usually truncated to sloop).

(2) In current Admiralty use, a lightly armed and armored blue-water warship, one size down from a frigate and capable of transoceanic duty.

(3) A GRP-bodied sports car produced in the US since 1953 by General Motors’ (GM) Chevrolet division.

1630–1640: From the French, from the Middle French corvette (a small, fast frigate), from either the Middle Dutch korver & corver (pursuit boat), the construct being corf (fishing boat; literally “basket”) + -ette or the Middle Low German korf (small boat; literally “basket”).  The source of both was the Latin corbis (basket) and, despite there existing also in Latin the corbita (navis) (slow-sailing ship of burden, grain ship), again from corbis, the relationship between this word and the later European forms is disputed.  The suffix –ette is from the Middle English -ette, a borrowing from the Old French -ette, from the Latin -itta, the feminine form of -ittus.  It was used to form nouns meaning a smaller form of something.  The Italian corvette & the Spanish corbeta are French loan-words, the German equivalent being korvette.  The obsolete alternative spelling was corvet.

Naval Battle between the French corvette La Bayonnaise and the British frigate HMS L'Embuscade, 14 December 1798, by Jean Francois Hue (1751-1823).

Historically, the term corvette, as applied to warships by various navies, can be misleading, the vessels varying greatly in size, displacement, armament and suitability for use on the high seas.  As a general principle, a corvette was understood to be a warship larger than a sloop, smaller than a frigate and with fewer and sometimes smaller-bore guns than the latter, always arrayed on a single deck.  Envisaged originally as a blue-water ship, they were allocated mostly to costal duties or the range of activities smaller vessels fulfilled in fleet support.  In the manner of military mission creep, overlap emerged and in some navies there were occasions when newer corvettes were at least a large an well-gunned as some frigates although the Royal Navy tended to maintain the distinctions, finding the smaller ships a useful addition in the seventeenth century, their fast build rate affording the Admiralty the means quickly to augment the firepower of a fleet.  To the British however, they remained sloops and it wasn’t until the 1830s the first vessels designated corvettes left UK shipyards.  It seems to have been the French Navy which first described the “big sloops” as corvettes but, whether by strategic design or in an attempt to confound the espionage activities of opponents, by the late eighteenth century, French naval architects were producing corvettes the British would have defined as frigates.

HMCS Bowmanville (K 493), Royal Canadian Navy Corvette of WWII.

Because of the nature of sea battles prior to World War II (1939-1945), ships the size of the corvette tended to be neglected, the interest in smaller warships be centred on the ever smaller torpedo boats and the two work-horses of the fleets, the frigate and the destroyer, both of which were better suited to support cruisers patrolling the trade routes of the empire and the battleships of the high-seas fleets.  What saw a revival of interest was the war-time need to protect the trans-Atlantic and Arctic Sea convoys.  While the small corvettes, marginal in blue-water conditions, weren’t ideal for the role, they could be produced quickly and cheaply and, as a war-time necessity, were pressed into service as a stop-gap until more destroyers became available.  An additional factor was their small size which meant they could be built in many of the small, civilian shipyards which would have lacked the capacity to construct a frigate, let alone a destroyer.  Since the war, the corvette as a designation has essentially become extinct but there have long been frigates and fast patrol boats in service with many navies which correspond in size with the traditional WWII corvette.

The early Chevrolet Corvettes, C1, C2 & C3 

1953 Corvette.

By 1952 the success in the US of MG and Jaguar had made it clear to Chevrolet that demand existed for sports cars and the market spread across a wide price band so with the then novel GRP (glass reinforced plastic, soon better known in the US as "fiberglass") offering the possibility of producing relatively low volumes of cars with complex curves without the need for expensive tooling or a workforce of craftsmen to shape them, a prototype was prepared for display at General Motors’ 1953 Motorama show.  Despite the perception among some it was the positive response of the Motorama audience which convinced GM’s management to approve production, the project had already be signed-off but the enthusiastic reaction certainly encouraged Chevrolet to bring the Corvette to market as soon as possible.  The name Corvette was chosen in the hope of establishing a connection with the light, nimble naval vessels.

1953 Corvette.

The haste brought its own, unique challenges.  In 1953, Chevrolet had no experience of large-scale production of GRP-bodied cars but neither did anybody else, GM really was being innovative.  The decision was thus taken to build a batch of three-hundred identical copies, the rationale being the workers would be able to perfect the assembly techniques involved in bolting and gluing together the forty-six GRP pieces produced by an outside contractor.  Thus, by a process of trial and error, were assembled three hundred white Corvettes with red interiors, a modest beginning but the sales performance was less impressive still, fewer than two-hundred finding buyers, mainly because the rate of production was erratic and with so few cars available for the whole country, dealers weren’t encouraged to take orders; uncertainty surrounded the programme for the whole year.  Seldom has GM made so little attempt actually to sell a car, preferring to use the available stock for travelling display purposes, tantalizing those who wanted one so they would be ready to spend when mass-production started.

1954 Corvette.

The first Corvettes had been produced on a small assembly line in Flint, Michigan to allow processes closely to be observed and optimized and by late 1953, Chevrolet was ready for high-volume runs, moving production to a plant in Saint Louis, Missouri with the capacity to make ten-thousand a year.  In anticipation of the Corvette being a regular-production model, three additional colors (black, red, and blue) were offered and the black soft-top was replaced by one finished in tan.  However, despite the enhancements, demand proved sluggish and fewer than four-thousand were sold in 1954 and there were reasons.  In 1961, Jaguar would stun the world with its new sports car, powered by a triple-carburetor 3.8 litre straight-six but in 1953, although Chevrolet’s Corvette boasted the same specification and a much admired body, it wasn’t anything like the sensation the E-type would be at Geneva.  The 1954 Corvette had gained a revised camshaft which increased power by 5 horsepower (hp), an output respectable by the standards of the time but the only transmission available was the Powerglide, a two speed automatic which for robustness and reliability matched the Blue Flame six-cylinder engine (an updated version of the pre-war "Stovebolt") to which it was attached but neither exhibited the dynamic qualities which had come to be expected from a sports car although owners would have to get used to it: the Powerglide would be the only automatic transmission offered in a Corvette until 1968.  In truth, the Corvette was betwixt & between; not quite a sports car yet lacking the creature comforts to appeal to those wanting a relaxed GT (grand-tourer).

1955 Corvette V8.

Chevrolet in 1955 solved the problem of the Corvette’s performance deficit by slotting in the new 265 cubic inch (4.3-litre) V-8 which would later come to be called the small-block and become a corporate stable, appearing over the decades in various forms in just about every Chevrolet and some models from other divisions (though this corporate sharing would not be without controversy).  Rated now at 195 hp which felt more convincing than the previous year’s 155, it was offered also with a three-speed manual transmission and could now run with the Jaguars, Mercedes-Benz and Ferraris on both road and track; the Corvette had become a sports car and while not cheap, compared with the competition, it was conspicuously good value.  Most 1955 Corvette V8s were fitted with the two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission but the factory's records confirm there were 19 with the three-speed manual (as "special orders", the manual unlisted as an option in most of sales literature).

1956 Corvette.

The V8 option had been introduced late in 1955 but the response of buyers had convinced Chevrolet where the future lay; once available, only seven had chosen the old Blue Flame six so for 1956 the Corvette became exclusively V8-powered, a specification by 2025 still not deviated from (although auxiliary electric motors would in the next century appear).  To emphasize the dual role the car now plausibly could fulfil, the Powerglide became optional and revisions to the engine meant power was up to 210 hp although for those who wanted more, a dual four-barrel carburetor setup could be specified which raised that to 225.  Still made from GRP, the revised styling hinted at some influence from the Mercedes-Benz 300SL (W198, 1954-1963) but had practical improvements as well, external door handles appearing and conventional side windows replaced the fiddly removable curtains, a civilizing addition some British roadsters wouldn’t acquire until well into the next decade.  There was also the indication Chevrolet did take seriously the dual role for in addition to the Powerglide remaining available, buyers could now specify a power-operated soft top and internal company documents noted the appeal of this feature "to women", a target market even then.  Whether it was sports car or GT was now up to the customer.

Jaguar E-Type advertising copy, 1971.

Chevrolet's experience in finding the six-cylinder Corvette had limited appeal once their V8 became available was in 1971 reprised across the Atlantic when Jaguar released the Series 3 E-Type (sometimes known in the US as XKE).  Jaguar's V12 project had a long gestation and by the time eventually it entered production, the 420G (1961-1970 and known originally as the Mark X) which had been intended as its first recipient, had been retired.  The task of engineering the much smaller XJ (introduced in 1968) to house the V12 was absorbing much energy so it was the E-Type in which the new engine was first used.  Jaguar made the effort to prepare the new S3 E-Type to use both the long-running, 4.2 litre (258 cubic inch) XK straight-six and the 5.3 litre (326 cubic inch) V12, including printing promotional material, even glossy, full-color, multi-lingual brochures.

Jaguar E-Type advertising copy, 1971.

However, before series production began, the decision was taken to offer the S3 only with the V12 and although there are tales of six XK-engined prototypes having been built, the Jaguar-Daimler Historic Trust insists the true number was four (2 roadsters & 2 coupés with one right hand drive (RHD) and one left hand drive (LHD) version of each); the LHD coupé with a manual transmission survived although when offered at auction in England, its rarity (genuinely it is unique) didn't attract a premium as it sold for a price little different from what might be expected for a V12 in the same condition.  By 1974, when the effects of the spike in the price of oil began to affect demand for engines as thirsty as the V12, the E-Type was in its last days so the company made no attempt to resurrect one with the smaller engine, unlike Mercedes-Benz which quickly made available in the R107 roadster and C107 coupé the 2.7 litre (168 cubic inch) six as an alternative to the 3.5 (214 cubic inch) & 4.5 (276 cubic inch) V8s.  Although it couldn't at the time have been predicted, the R107 in both six & eight cylinder form remained available until 1989 so the efforts taken during the first oil shock proved worthwhile.  It wouldn't be until 1983 Jaguar offered the XJS (1975-1996 and (sort of) the E-Type's replacement) with a six-cylinder engine and, remarkably, the XJS would enjoy a longer life even than the R107, the last not leaving the factory until 1996.           

1957 Corvette (fuel injected).

In 1957, things started to get really serious, a four-speed manual transmission was added, the V8 was bored out to 283 cubic inches (4.6 liters) which increased power and, in an exotic touch which matched the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, Rochester mechanical fuel-injection was an (expensive) option, allowing the Corvette to boast an engine with one hp per cubic inch, something in the past achieved only by the big dual-quad Chrysler Hemis, offered only in heavyweight machines which, although fast, were no sports cars, heavy cruisers rather than corvettes.  Unlike the electronic fuel-injection systems others flirted with in the era, Rochester's mechanical system proved reliable although it did demand well-trained mechanics to ensure it remained in tune.

1958 Corvette.

A noted change for 1958 was the tachometer moving from the centre of the dashboard to a place directly in from to the driver, probably a wise move given the propensity of the fuel-injected engine to high-speed and output continued to rise, by 1960 315 hp would be generated by the top option.  One big styling trend in 1957 had been the quad headlamps allowed states relaxed their lighting regulations and these were added, unhappily according to some, to the Corvette for 1958.  However, even many of those of those who admired the four-eyed look thought the lashings of chrome a bit much.  Chrome was quite a thing in Detroit by 1958 and De Sotos, Lincolns, Buicks and such were displaying their shiny splendour but it probably didn’t suit the Corvette quite so well which was unfortunate given it was adorned with much, even the headlight bezels getting a coating.  A change of management at the top of Chevrolet's styling department ensured 1958 was peak-chrome for the sports car; cars from other divisions would for some time continue to drip the stuff but the Corvette would be notably more restrained.

1962 Corvette.

Although the changes since 1963 had been many, the Corvette was still in its first generation but the 1962 model would be the end of the line.  The front end had earlier been revised from its chromed origin and in 1961 a redesigned rear arrived which saw the debut of the quad-taillight design which would for decades remain a distinctive feature.  1962 saw the introduction of a 327 cubic-inch (5.3 litre) V8, the fuel-injected version now up to 360 hp and one aborted project was the Grand Sport (GS) Corvette, a competition oriented model.  It had been intended to build a run of 125 in order to homologate it in certain racing categories but GM, still (unlike its competitors) taking seriously the need to make it appear it was maintaining the industry's agreed ban on participation in motorsport, cancelled the programme after five had been built; all survived and are now expensive collectibles, something which had inspired the creation of a number of clones.

1963 Corvette.

For 1963, unusually, the big news wasn’t what was under the hood (bonnet).  The 327 V8 was carried over from 1962 but, other than the drive-train, it was a new car (later referred to as the C2, the 1953-1952 models now retrospectively dubbed the C1), offered for the first time as a coupé as well as the traditional convertible and with a revised frame which included independent rear suspension, a rarity at the time on US-built vehicles.  One quirk of the 1963 coupés was the split-window design of the rear glass.  A source of debate within Chevrolet, the anti-split faction eventually won and a single piece of glass was substituted in 1964 which of course rendered the 1963 cars instantly dated.  As a result, a small-scale industry sprung up offering owners the chance to update their look to that of the 1964's single piece of glass and many cars were converted.  That changed decades later when the unique feature of the 1963 car made it a much prized collectable and another small-scale industry briefly flourished converting them back and, whether true or urban myth, it’s said as many as 4% of the split-window coupés which now exist may be later models with a bit of judicious back-dating.  Chevrolet officially had no involvement in racing but understood the Corvette’s appeal to those who did and in 1963 offered Regular Production Option (RPO) Z06 which included an improved brake and suspension package.  Available only in conjunction with the 360 hp engine and a four-speed manual transmission, around two-hundred were built, most of them coupés.

1965 Corvette 396 with hard-top, side exhaust pipes and Kelsey-Hayes cast aluminum wheels (still with knock-off hubs that year).

Although the Corvette had gained powerful, fuel-injected engines and an effective independent rear suspension, the drum brakes remained the package’s weak link.  In 1964 option J65 (US$53.80) bundled the power assistance (as stand-alone option J50 retailing at US$43.05) with sintered metallic linings for the brakes but while this improved the retardation and especially the propensity for performance to fade in sustained use, the combo couldn’t match what could be achieved with disk brakes.  Still, the motoring press commended option and it persuaded 4,780 buyers to tick the box.  At a hefty US$629.50 however then was option J56, described as “Special Sintered Metallic Brake Package” and that it was available only with a fuel-injected engine, a four-speed transmission and a Positraction rear end was an indication it was intended only for those who operated in “extreme conditions” (ie on race tracks).  Effective they certainly were but, noisy and with high pedal pressures, they were not suitable for street use and a scant 29 customers were tempted.  In what was an overdue upgrade, Chevrolet made four-wheel disc brakes standard for the 1965 model year although the drums remained available (as delete-option code J61) for anyone who wished to save a few dollars.  Those who opted to eschew the dramatic improvement in braking offered were probably specialists; because of internal friction the discs did impose a (very slight) performance and economy reduction which was why drums were long preferred on the NASCAR ovals where brakes are rarely applied and fractions of a second per lap can be the difference between winning and losing,  Only 316 Corvette buyers chose to save the US$64.50 and the disks definitely were a good idea if the newest engine was chosen.  Although developed by  Kelsey-Hayes, the brakes were manufactured for Chevrolet by Delco Moraine and included a pair of small drum brakes in the rear hubs to provide a parking brake, something difficult to engineer with disks.  Kelsey-Hayes also produced the optional aluminium wheels but at US$322.80 the take-up rate was low and many C2 Corvettes now are fitted with modern reproductions of the originals; the same applies to the side exhaust-pipes (a new option for 1965 at US$134.50), many more Corvettes now so equipped than the 759 which in 1965 left the factory. 

Mid-year, the big-block 396 cubic-inch (6.5 litre) V-8 became available and it was rated at 425 hp, a figure few doubted after seeing the performance figures.  Given the numbers, it wasn't surprising only 771 chose the fuel injected 327 compared with the 2157 who opted for the big-block 396 which must have seemed a bargain compared to the US$202.30 Chevrolet charged for the 36 (US) gallon (136 litre) fuel tank (available only for the coupé) and all these prices must be considered in the context of the Corvette's base price (US$4106.00 for the convertible and US$1321.00 for the coupé) and air-conditioning ordered by only 2423 buyers (9.7%); at US$421.00 it increased the invoice by some 10%.  There were charms only the fuel-injected unit could provide but the customer is always right and before the year was out, the Rochester option was retired and it wouldn’t be until 1982, in the age of the micro-chip, that Chevrolet would again offer a fuel-injected Corvette.  Buyers clearly were convinced by the big-block idea but the sections of the motoring press were ambivalent, Car & Driver's (C&D) review suggesting that while "...there are many sports cars which really need more power, the Corvette isn’t one of them."  Unlike the chauvinistic English motoring press which tended to be a bit one-eyed about things like Jaguars and Aston-Martins, there were many in the US motoring media who really didn’t approve of American cars and wished they were more like Lancias.  People should be careful what they wish for.

1967 Corvette L88 with side exhaust pipes and Kelsey-Hayes cast aluminum wheels (with five-stud hubs that year).

Maybe even Chevrolet had moments of doubt after reading their copy of C&D and thought the 396 Corvette might have been a bit much because after providing cars for the press to test, they issued a statement saying the 396 wouldn’t be available in the Corvette after all but would be offered in the intermediate Chevelle as well as the full-sized cars.  The moment however quickly passed, the 396 Corvette remaining on the books and by 1966 Chevrolet certainly agreed there was no substitute for cubic inches, the 396 replaced by a 427 cubic-inch (7.0 litre) iteration of the big-block.  For 1966 it was still rated at 425 hp but in 1967, a triple carburetor option sat atop the top engine, gaining an additional ten hp.  There was however another, barely advertised and rarely discussed because of its unsuitability for street use and this was the L88, conservatively rated at 430 hp but actually developing between 540-560.  Essentially a road-going version of the 427 used in the (unlimited displacement FIA Group 7 sports-car) Can-Am race series, just 20 were sold in 1967, the survivors among the most sought-after Corvettes, one selling at auction in 2014 for US$3.85 million.

By the 1960s it was common for hard-tops to be on the option list of a roadster (in the era there was even one company which briefly (and unsuccessfully) offered GRP versions for Detroit's full-size convertibles) but Chevrolet gave C2 Corvette buyers the choice to have both a hard-top & soft-top or just one of the two.  Remarkably (and presumably in places where rain events were predictable), a number of buyers did take the hard-top only course and the configuration wasn't unique to Chevrolet, Mercedes-Benz in some years offering its "Pagoda" roadster (W113; 1963-1971) with only a hard-top although it was listed a separate model: the "California Coupé" which, despite the name, was still a convertible and one which offered the additional practicality of a folding bench seat in the rear compartment, permitting (cramped) seating for two.   

Joe Biden (b 1942; US president 2021-2025) in his 1967 Corvette.

Given he was already 62 when Mean Girls was released in 2004, most assumed it must have been an intern who provided the intelligence (1) that October 3 is "Mean Girls Day" and (2) "Get in loser, we're going shopping" is a line waiting to be a meme.  Thus the tweet in 2022 although there was some subterfuge involved, the photograph actually from a session at his Wilmington, Delaware estate on July 16 2020.  The excuse for not taking a new snap probably was legitimate, the Secret Service most reluctant to let him behind the wheel (and they probably had many reasons to be worried).  The presidency is often called the most powerful office in the world but he's still not allowed to drive his own Corvette (all ex-presidents actually forbidden again to take the wheel on public roads) and George HW Bush (George XLI, 1924-2018; US president 1989-1993) encountered push-back when he refused to eat broccoli, apparently still scarred by the experience when young of having the green stuff forced on him by his mother.  He was far from the only head of state or government to have had unresolved issues with his mother.

President Biden's Corvette Sting Ray (it was two words in the C2 era) was ordered with the base version of the 327 rated at 300 hp, coupled to a four-speed manual gearbox.  For what most people did most of the time the combination of the base engine and the four-speed was ideal for street use although there were some who claimed the standard three-speed transmission was even more suited to the urban environment, the torque-spread of even the mildest of the V8s such that the driving experience didn't suffer and fewer gearchanges were required.  Those wanting the automatic option were restricted still to the old two-speed Powerguide, the newer Turbo-Hydramatic with an extra ratio simply too bulky to fit (some subsequently have modified their early cars with a Turbo-Hydramatic but they didn't have to organize the production line upon which thousands would be built).  The 1967 cars were actually an accident of history, the C3 (slated for release as a 1967 model) delayed (the issues said to be with with aerodynamics which in the those days meant spending time in the wind tunnel and on the test track, computer modelling of such things decades away) by one season.  Sales were thus down from 1966 as the new, swoopy body was much anticipated but the 1967 cars are now among the most coveted.

1967 Corvette 427-400 Tri-Power convertible with Powerglide.

The original 1953 Corvette had used the two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission because Chevrolet at the time didn’t have available a suitable manual gearbox.  The company was however innovative in the implementation, the floor-shift mechanism being the first known instance of the location for an automatic’s lever and it protruded from the side of the housing, something which doubtless seemed exotic but was really a short-cut by the engineers because it meant they could use the existing take-up for the linkage (Chrysler as late as 1963 used the same arrangement 300J).  The configuration really didn’t detract much from the driving experience because the Powerglide was, by the standards of the era, quick-shifting (though with only two ratios such events were anyway rare) and efficient which, combined with the light weight of the GRP body, made the thing a match in performance for many, heavier, V8-powered cars.  Even after manual gearboxes were added to the option list (a three-speed in 1955 and a four-speed two year later), the Powerglide remained available although in a typical year it was chosen by some 10% of buyers and as more powerful engines appeared (some with dual four-barrel carburetors, some with fuel-injection), these were offered only with the manual gearbox and the preference of the buyers who preferred the automatic was always slanted to the lowest outputs.

1967 Corvette 427-390 coupe with Powerglide and air-conditioning.

When the big-block 396 debuted in the Corvette in mid 1965, it was available only with the four-speed manual, a limitation continued when it was replaced for the next season by the 427.  Unexpectedly however, the Powerglide in 1969 appeared on the option list for both the 390 (four barrel) and 400 (3 x 2 barrel) horsepower iterations although the more powerful (which used solid valve lifters and had higher redlines), retained the manual-only restriction.  Demand for the big-block / Powerglide combination was subdued: of the 2324 1967 Corvettes ordered with the automatic gearbox, 1725 used the 300 HP 327 and only 599 the 427, 392 with the 390 HP version, 207 with the 400.  In an indication of Chevrolet’s expectations of the Corvette buyer profile attracted to the Powerglide, air-conditioning was available with both the 390 & 400 HP engines.  It was the last year the Powerglide would appear in the Corvette, the platform of the succeeding C3 designed to accommodate the physically much larger Turbo-Hydramatic.  A more modern and much superior design, the availability of the new three-speed transmission was welcomed but the old two-speed did have the charm of being able to hit 90 mph (145 km/h) in first gear, something of genuine benefit to the drag racing crowd who to this day continue to prize the Powerglide for (1) its robustness and (2) the ability to complete a quarter mile (402 m) run with only one gear change, slicing priceless fractions of a second from the ET (elapsed time).  One trend which began with the debut of the new transmission in the Corvette was the take-up rate in the sports car essentially doubled; in 1969 the Turbo-Hydramatic was chosen by some 20% of buyers and the trend would accelerate; in 1982 (its last year of production), the Corvette was automatic only and by then the lower power and torque ratings meant the Turbo-Hydramatic had been replaced by a unit which was more efficient (although, as some would discover, it was also less robust).  When the C8 Corvette was released in 2020, there was no conventional manual gearbox available, that decision taken for the same reason Ferrari had discontinued use almost a decade earlier: the automatic out-performed the manual in every aspect.    

Same L72 engine, different stickers: An early one (left) with a "450 HP" sticker and a later build (right) with a "425 HP".  

Most fetishized by the Corvette collector community are (1) rare models, (2) rare options singularly or in combinations and (3) production line quirks, especially if accompanied by documents confirming it was done by the factory.  There were a few of all of these during the Corvette’s first two decades and some of them attract a premium which is why the things can sell for over US$3 million at auction.  Other quirks bring less but are still prized, including the handful of 1966 cars rated (sort of) at 450 hp.  The L72 version of the 427 cubic inch engine was initially listed as developing 450 hp @ 5800 rpm, something GM presumably felt compelled to do because the 396 had been sold with a 425 hp rating and the first few cars built included an air-cleaner sticker reflecting the higher number.  However, the L72 was quickly (apparently for all built after October 1965) re-stickered at 425 hp @ 5600 rpm although the only physical change was to the sticker, the engines otherwise identical.  Chrysler used the same trick when advertising the 426 Street Hemi at 425 hp despite much more power being developed at higher engine speeds and that reflected a trend which began in the mid-1960s to under-rate the advertised output of the most powerful engines, a response to the concerns already being expressed by safety campaigners, insurance companies and some politicians.  Later Corvettes would be rated at 435 hp and it wasn’t until the 1970 model year that Chevrolet would list a 450 hp option (the 454 cubic inch (7.4 litre) LS6) but that was exclusive to the intermediate Chevelle and it remains the highest advertised rating of the muscle car era.  GM did plan that year to release a LS7 Corvette rated at 465 hp, building at least one prototype and even printing the brochures but the universe had shifted and the project was stillborn.  So, all else being equal, an early-build 1966 Corvette with a 450 HP sticker on the air-cleaner should attract a premium but Chevrolet kept no records of which cars got them and with reproduction stickers available for under US$20, it's obvious some have been "backdated", thus the minimal after-market effect.  Nor is there any guarantee some later-build vehicles didn't receive the stickers at the factory so even the nominal October 1965 "cut-off" isn't regarded as iron-clad, many assembly lines at the time known to use up superseded parts just to clear the inventory.  Not easily replicated however was another rarity from 1966.  That year, only 66 buyers chose RPO N03 (the 36 gallon fuel tank).  Depending on the the engine/transmission combination and final-drive ratio chosen, a Corvette's fuel economy was rated usually between "bad" and "worse" so the "big tank option" did usefully increase the range but it was really aimed at those using their cars in endurance racing.

Kelsey-Hayes cast aluminum wheels for C2 Corvette, the knock off version (option code P48, 1963-1966, top) and the later five-stud (option code N89, 1967, bottom).  They were manufactured by Western Wheel Corporation (a division of Kelsey-Hayes).

Available as a factory option on C2 Corvettes between 1963-1967, the Kelsey-Hayes cast aluminum wheels remained visually similar throughout the run but there were several detail differences in finish and, in the final year, a major structural change.  No series production 1963 Corvettes appear to have been factory-fitted with the wheels though they were at the time used on some race-cars (with two rather than three-eared hubs) and some of Chevrolet’s pre-production (the so called “pilot cars”) had them; these were the vehicles used in for the photo-sessions for the original brochures where the wheels appear.  The 1963-1964 run used a natural aluminum finish between the fins with a chrome centre cone; in 1965 the color was changed to a charcoal grey metallic while in 1966 the cone received a brushed finish.  The wheels were attached with “knock off” hubs which gained their name from the use of a hammer to “knock them off” (and back on) when a wheel needed to be removed.  Chevrolet in the tool kit of Corvettes fitted with the wheels included a 2 lb mallet with a lead face & core because damage can result if a steel hammer or mallet is used.  Lead being soft, with repeated use the stuff can wear away and expose the steel cylinder within so periodically the device should be inspected.  The major change came for 1967 when thinner fins appeared and, as a consequence of newly imposed federal regulations, the knock off hubs were replaced with the more familiar five-stud securing arrangement.  In 1967, the option code for the wheels changed from P48 to N89 and, reflecting the lower cost of production entailed in the simpler construction, the price was reduced from US$316.00 to US$263.30 but that added some 6% to the base cost and they were fitted to only 720 of the 22940 (3.14%) 1967 Corvettes produced although many more now exist with reproductions.  The new centre caps came to be known as “Starbursts”.

Starburst sea anemone.

As a noun & verb, “starburst” widely has been used in slang and commerce but its origin is owed to astronomers of the 1830s and in the field it’s been used variously to describe (1) a violent explosion, or the pattern (likened to the shape of a star) supposed to be made by such an explosion and (2) a region of space or period of time (distinct concepts for this purpose) with an untypically or unexpectedly high rate of star formation.  In SF (science fiction), starbursts can be more exotic still and have described machines from light-speed propulsion engines to truly horrid doomsday weapons.  In typography, a starburst is a symbol similar in shape to an asterisk, but with either or both additional or extended rays and it’s used for a brand of fruit-flavored confectionery, the name implying the taste “explodes” in the mouth as one chews or sucks.  In corporate use, starburst is slang for the breaking up of a company (or unit of a company) into a number of distinct operations and in software it was in the early 1980s used as the brand name of an application suite (based around the Wordstar word-processor) which was (along with Electric Office) one of the first “office suites”, the model Microsoft would later adopt for its “Office” product which bundled, Word, Excel, the dreaded PowerPoint and such.  It was the name of a British made-portable surface-to-air missile (MANPADS) produced in the late twentieth century, in botany it’s a tropical flowering plant (Clerodendrum quadriloculare), the term applied also to a species of sea anemone in the family Actiniidae and, in human anatomy, certain cell types (based on their appearance).  In photography, the “starburst effect” refers to the diffraction spikes which radiate from sources of bright light.         

1969 Corvette L88.

The C2 Corvette had a short life of only five years and it would have been shorter still had not there been delays in the development of the C3 which went on sale in late 1967.  Dramatically styled, the C3 eventually debuted for the 1968 model year, the lines reminiscent of the Mako Shark II  (1965) concept car and the coupé included the novelty of removable roof panels.  Underneath the swoopy body, the C3 was essentially the same as the C2 except the old two-speed Powerglide was retired, the automatic option now whichever of the three-speed Turbo-Hydramatics suited the chosen engine.  The C3 also saw one of the early appearances of fibre-optic cables, used to provide an internal display so drivers could check the functionally of external lights and for 1969, the 327 was stroked to 350 cubic inches (5.7 litres), one of the surprisingly large number of changes which can make the 1968 Corvette something of a challenge for restorers, there being so many parts unique to that model-year.  Still available was the L88 and in the two seasons it was offered in the C3, 196 were sold (80 in 1968 and 116 in 1969) but even in its most successful year, the option represented only around .003% of annual production.

C3 Corvette production Count, 1968-1982.

A classic roadster, the C3 Chevrolet Corvette L88: Convertible with soft-top lowered (top left), convertible with hard-top in place (top right), convertible with soft-top erected (bottom left) and coupé (roof with two removable panels (T-top)) (bottom right).  The four vehicles in these images account for 2.040816% of the 196 C3 L88 Corvettes produced (80 in 1968; 116 in 1969) and the L88 count constitutes .000361% of total C3 production.196 C3 L88 Corvettes were produced (80 in 1968; 116 in 1969) and the L88 count constitutes .000361% of total C3 production.  

1969 Corvette ZL1 Roadster.

However, there was one even more expensive option, the RPO ZL1, sometimes described as “an all aluminium L88” but actually with a number of differences some necessitated by the different metal while others were examples of normal product development.  Again the fruit of Chevrolet’s support for the Can-Am teams, the ZL1 was no more suited to street use than the L88 and at US$4,718.35 was three times as expensive.  In 1969, a basic Corvette listed at US$4,781 and if the ZL1 option box was ticked the price essentially doubled although beyond that temptations were few, like the L88, air conditioning, power steering, power brakes and even a radio not available.  It was thus unsurprising demand was muted and it's now accepted that of the seven built, only two were sold, the other five being for engineering and promotional purposes, these “factory mules” scrapped or re-purposed after their usefulness was over.  The yellow coupé last changed hands in October 1991 when it was sold in a government auction for US$300,000 (then a lot of money) after being seized by the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and in January 2023, at auction, the orange roadster realized US$3.14 million.  The yellow one sits now in the museum attached to Roger Judski's Corvette Centre in that hive of DEA activity: Florida.

1969 Corvette ZL1 Coupé.

So the orthodox wisdom is there are two “real” ZL1s and an unknown number of faux versions (described variously as clones, replicas, tributes etc, none of these terms having an agreed definition and thus not useful as indications of the degree to which they emulate a factory original).  However, the “ultra” faction in the Corvette community maintains the yellow coupé is a genuine one-off and claim the orange roadster left the factory with an L88 engine and in that form it was raced, as well as when fitted with a ZL1.  The faction further notes the orange machine is an early-build vehicle reported to have closed chamber heads whereas the RPO ZL1s used open chambers.  The “moderate” faction continues to regard the count as two although nobody seems now to support the rumors which circulated for a few years indicating a third and even a fourth, the supposed “black roadster” later confirmed to be faux.  Given all that, the fact the orange car sold for over US$3 million in 2023 does suggest that were the yellow one to go on the block, a new record price would be likely.  Roger Judski (B 1947), owner of the yellow ZL1, has been trading Corvettes since 1965 and is as authoritative an expert on the breed as anyone and he belongs to the moderate faction which supports the orthodox count of two factory ZL1s.

1971 Corvette with RPO ZR2 LS6 454.  This is one of two convertibles, the other 10 1971 ZR2s being coupés.

The 1969 ZL1 and L88 however would prove to be peak C3 Corvette.  Times were changing and in 1970 it was the Chevelle which was offered with Chevrolet’s top big-block street engine, the now 454 cubic-inch (7.4 litre) LS6 rated at 450 hp, the industry’s highest (official) rating of the era; plans for a 465 hp LS7 Corvette were cancelled as insurance costs and the regulatory environment began to tighten around the high-powered monsters although serious horsepower remained available: while the LS5 454 was rated at 390 horsepower, the performance it delivered suggested it was perhaps a little healthier.  The Corvette highlight of the 1970s however came in 1971 with the availability of the RPO ZR2 for the LS6 engine, described in dealer sheets as the “RPO ZR2 Special Purpose LS6 Engine Package” and it can be regarded as a successor the L88, supplied with the Muncie M22 close-ratio (Rock-Crusher) four-speed manual transmission, transistorized ignition, a heavy-duty aluminum radiator (with shroud delete, a hint it really didn’t belong on the street), heavy-duty power disc brakes, F41 Special Suspension with specific springs, shocks and special front and rear sway bars.  Like the L88s, air-conditioning and a radio were not on the option list, neither much used on race-tracks.  Chevrolet built only a dozen ZR2 Corvettes (two of which were convertibles) in 1971, not because production deliberately was limited but because of the cost (the list price was a then substantial US$7.672.80) and their unsuitability for everyday use meant demand was subdued.  Although scheduled for 1970, industrial relations problems delayed production of the ZR2 until 1971 by which time stricter regulations had compelled cancellation of the LS7 454 so RPO ZR2 was re-purposed for the LS6, rated at a conservative 425 horsepower although this didn’t fool the insurance industry.  

800 cfm (cubic feet per minute) carburetor on 1970 Corvette LT1.

Lurking behind the thunder of the 454 however was the most charismatic of the small-block Corvettes since the days of the fuel-injected 283 & 327.  This was the 350 LT1, a high-revving mill very much in the tradition of the Camaro's 302 Z/28 (RPO Z28 picked up the slash when used as a model name) used in the (five litre (305 cubic inch) production car) Trans-Am series, which featured heavy-duty internals and high performance additions including solid valve lifters, forged pistons, an 11:1 compression ratio, four-bolt main bearing caps, a forged steel crank, a hi-lift camshaft, a baffled sump and a free-flowing induction and exhaust system.  In a echo of the days of Rochester fuel-injection, it was almost twice the price of a 454 but was a persuasive package and over a thousand were made.  Available only with a manual transmission, it lasted until 1972 and although the lowering of the compression ration meant power ratings dropped season-by-season (1970:370 HP; 1971:330 HP; 1972:255 HP), the 1972 number reflected the industry's change from quoting gross to nett horsepower so the reduction wasn't as dramatic as it might appear.  Although still fast by most standards, the 1972 cars were somewhat less potent, the compensation being that by reducing the redline to 5600 RPM (to stop the belt flying off the compressor), the LT1 could that year be ordered with air-conditioning.  Most desirable of the C3 LT1s were those ordered with the ZR1 package, fewer than 60 of which were delivered between 1970-1972.  The ZR1 options were focused not on additional horsepower but rendering the chassis better suited for use in competition, the target market those who wanted to participate in the racing series run by the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America).  Accordingly, what was included was a cold-air hood, a larger capacity cooling system (including a different shroud and fan optimized for high-speed operation), the famed Muncie M22 (rock crusher) four-speed manual transmission, electronic ignition, upgraded power brakes, stiffer shock-absorbers (dampers), springs and front & rear anti-roll (sway) bars.  Given the emphasis, choosing the ZR1 package meant that, like the big-block L88s & ZL1, the fitting of luxuries like air conditioning, the rear-window defroster, power steering, the fancy wheel covers, alarm system and a radio were precluded.  ZR1 buyers really did inhabit a niche market and the vehicles are now highly prized.

1980 Corvette (California model with LG4 305 V8) in Frost Beige (paint code 59) over Dark Doeskin leather (trim code 59C).  It looked the part.

The LT1 is fondly remembered but from then on it was mostly downhill for the C3 although in its last years its popularity reached new heights and it was one of GM's most profitable lines.  In 1975 both the convertible and the (by then much-detuned 454) big-block V8 were cancelled but tellingly, in what came to be called the "malaise era", the C3 enjoyed a long India summer, its performance stellar on the sales charts if not the track and, with no appetite for horsepower, Chevrolet devoted attention to creature comforts, seats and air-conditioning systems much improved.  A sort of nadir is attached to the 1980 models sold in Californian which, because of more stringent emission rules, were fitted only with an automatic transmission and the LG4 305 cubic inch (5.0 litre) engine found often in station wagons and pick-up trucks although it managed to be a little brisker than the Blue Flame original.  The Californian 305 was claimed to generate 180 hp which was actually 15 more than the unfortunate 350 (L48) in the 1975 model (the optional L82 listed with 205 hp).  The method of calculating stated hp changed in 1972 from gross to nett so the earlier numbers should not directly be compared with the newer but there's no doubt the Corvettes after the early-1970s were making a lot less power than the tarmac-melting fire-breathers of a few years before and though things had improved by the early 1980s, it wasn't by much.  Both the tamest of the 1975 cars and the 1980 Californian 305 tend to be coupled as the least fondly remembered of the breed but, enjoying solid demand to the end, the C3 remained in production until 1982, the last sold the following year.  In fairness to the "malaise era" Corvettes, they should be compared not with an earlier era but with what else was on the market at the time and judged thus, the Corvette was one of the better performers and still offered much for the money.