Quarantine

Quarantine (pronounced kwawr-uhn-teen or kwor-uhn-teen)

(1) In historic English common law, the period of 40 days during which a widow was entitled to remain in her deceased husband's home while any dower is collected and returned.

(2) A strict isolation imposed to prevent the spread of disease and (by extension), any rigorous measure of isolation, regardless of the reason.

(3) A period, originally 40 days (the historic understanding of the maximum known incubation period of disease) of detention or isolation imposed upon ships, persons, animals, or plants on arrival at a port or place, when suspected of carrying some infectious or contagious disease; a record system kept by port health authorities in order to monitor and prevent the spread of contagious diseases.  The origin was in measures taken in 1448 in Venice's lazaret to avoid renewed outbreaks of the bubonic plague.

(4) In historic French law, a 40-day period imposed by the king upon warring nobles during which they were forbidden from exacting revenge or to continue warfare.

(5) A place where such isolation is enforced (a lazaret).

(6) In international relations, a blockade of trade, suspension of diplomatic relations, or other action whereby one country seeks to isolate another.

(7) In computing, a place where files suspected of harboring a computer virus or other harmful code are stored in a way preventing infection of other files or machines; the process of such an isolation.

(8) To withhold a portion of a welfare payment from a person or group of people (Australia).

(9) To quarantine someone or something.

1600–1610: From the Middle English quarentine (period a ship suspected of carrying contagious disease is kept in isolation), from the Norman quarenteine, from the French quarenteine, from the Italian quarantina, a variant of quarantena, originally from the upper Italian (Venetian) dialect as quaranta giorni (space of forty days, group of forty), from quaranta (forty) from the Medieval Latin quarentīna (period of forty days; Lent), from the Classical Latin quadrāgintā (four tens, forty) and related to quattuor (four), from the primitive Indo-European root kwetwer (four).  The difference between quarantine and isolation is one of context; while people might for many reasons be isolated, quarantine is a public health measure to deal with those exposed to or at risk of having been infected by a communicable disease, the duration of the quarantine being sufficient to ensure any risk of spreading the infection has passed.  The name is from the Venetian policy (first enforced as the 30 day edict trentino in 1377) of keeping ships from plague-stricken countries waiting off its port for forty days to ensure no latent cases remained aboard.  The extended sense of "any period of forced isolation" dates from the 1670s.  A doublet of carene and quadragene.

In the context the L'Ancien Régime (pre-revolutionary France), it was a calque of the French quarantaine, following the edicts of Louis IX (and formalized by the quarantaine du Roi (1704) of Louis XIV which was a mechanism of quieting squabbling nobles).  Quarantine was introduced to international relations as a euphemism for "blockade" in 1937 because the Roosevelt administration was (1) conscious of public reaction to the effects on civilians of the Royal Navy’s blockade of Imperial Germany during World War I (1914-1918) and (2) legal advice that a “blockade” of a non-belligerent was, under international law, probably an act of war.  The use was revived by the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962).  The verb meaning "put under quarantine" came quickly to be used in any sense including figuratively (to isolate, as by authority) dates from 1804.  Predating the use in public health, in early sixteenth century English common law, the quarentine was the period of 40 days during which a widow was entitled to remain in her dead husband's home while any dower is collected and returned.  The alternative spellings quarentine, quarantin, quaranteen, quarantain, quarantaine, quarrentine, quarantene, quarentene, quarentyne, querentyne are all obsolete except in historic references).  While not of necessity entirely synonymous, detention, sequester, separation, seclusion, segregation, sequestration, lazaretto, segregate, confine, separate, seclude, insulate, restrict, detach & cordon, are at least vaguely similar.  Quarantine is a noun & verb, quarantiner is a noun, quarantinable is an adjective and quarantined & quarantining are verbs & adjectives.

In scripture, the number 40 often occurs although Biblical scholars, always anxious to dismiss musings from numerologists, new age practitioners and crystal-wearing basket weavers, reject the notion it has any special meaning beyond the idea of a “period of trial or struggle”, memorably expressed in the phrase “forty days and forty nights”.  In the Old Testament, when God destroyed the earth in the Great Flood, he delivered rain for 40 days and 40 nights (Genesis 7:12).  After killing the Egyptian, Moses fled to Midian where he spent 40 years in the desert tending flocks (Acts 7:30) and subsequently he stood on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights (Exodus 24:18) and then interceded on Israel’s behalf for 40 days and 40 nights (Deuteronomy 9:18, 25).  In Deuteronomy 25:3, the maximum number of lashes a man could receive as punishment for a crime was set at 40.  The Israelite spies took 40 days to spy out Canaan (Numbers 13:25), the Israelites wandered for 40 years (Deuteronomy 8:2-5) and before Samson’s deliverance, Israel served the Philistines for 40 years (Judges 13:1).  Goliath taunted Saul’s army for 40 days before David arrived to slay him (1 Samuel 17:16) and when Elijah fled from Jezebel, he traveled 40 days and 40 nights to Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:8).  The number 40 also appears in the prophecies of Ezekiel (4:6; 29:11-13) and Jonah (3:4).  In the New Testament, the quarentyne was the desert in which Christ fasted and was tempted for for 40 days and 40 nights (Matthew 4:2) and there were 40 days between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension (Acts 1:3).  Presumably, this influenced Western medicine because it was long (and still by some) recommended that women should for 40 days rest after childbirth.

Plague, the Venetians and Quarantino

The Plague of Justinian arrived in Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 541, brought from recently conquered Egypt across the Mediterranean by plague-ridden fleas in the fur of rats on ships bringing loot from the war.  From the imperial capital it spread across Europe, Asia, North Africa and Arabia, killing an estimated thirty to fifty million, perhaps a quarter the inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean.  Plague never really went away, localized outbreaks happening periodically unit it returned as a pandemic some eight-hundred years later; the Black Death, which hit Europe in 1347, claimed some two-hundred million in just four years and demographically, Europe would not for centuries recover from the Black Death.

There was at the time little scientific understanding of contagion but it became clear it was related to proximity so officials in Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik in Croatia) resolved to keep newly arrived sailors in isolation until it was apparent they were healthy.  Initially, the sailors were confined to their ships for thirty days, formalized in a 1377 Venetian law as a trentino (thirty days), which radically reduced the transmission rate and by 1448, the Venetians had increased the forced isolation to forty days (quarantine), which, given bubonic plague’s thirty-seven day cycle from infection to death, was an example of a practical scientific experiment.  The word soon entered Middle English as quarantine (already in use in common law as a measure of certain rights accruing to a widow), the origin of the modern word and practice of quarantine.  The English had many opportunities to practice quarentine.  In the three-hundred odd years between 1348 and 1665, London suffered some forty outbreaks, about once a generation (or every twenty years), the significance of this pattern something which modern epidemiologists would later understand.  Quarentine laws were introduced in the early sixteenth century and proved effective, reducing the historic medieval death-rates to about twenty percent.

Eggs à la Lohan

In self-imposed quarantine in March 2020, Lindsay Lohan was apparently inspired by a widely shared motivational poem by Kitty O’Meara (on the internet dubbed the "poet laureate of the pandemic") which included the fragment:

And the people stayed home.  And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still.  And listened more deeply.  Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.  Some met their shadows.  And the people began to think differently.

One of Lindsay Lohan's recommendations for a time of quarantine was to take the time to cook, posting a photograph of Eggs à la Lohan, a tasty looking omelet.  The poem also contained the words:

And the people healed.  And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.  And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

Unfortunately, viewed from early 2023, it would seem Ms O'Meara's hopes quarantine might have left us kinder, gentler and more thoughtful may not have be realized.  It may be Mr Putin didn’t read poem and just ate omelet. 

Isolation

Isolation (pronounced ahy-suh-ley-shuhn)

(1) An act or instance of isolating; the state of being isolated.

(2) In medicine, the complete separation from others of a person suffering from contagious or infectious disease; quarantine.

(3) In diplomacy, the separation, as a deliberate choice by government, of a nation from other nations by nonparticipation in or withdrawal from international relations and institutions.

(4) In psychoanalysis, a process whereby an idea or memory is divested of its emotional component.

(5) In social psychology, the failure of an individual to maintain contact with others or genuine communication where interaction with others persists.

(6) In linguistics and other fields, to consider matters without regard to context.

(7) In chemistry, obtaining an element from one of its compounds, or of a compound from a mixture

(8) In computing, a database property that determines when and how changes made in one transaction are visible to other concurrent transactions.

1830s: A compound word, isolate + -ion.  A modern English borrowing from the French isolé (placed on an island (thus away from other people)).  Isolé was from the Italian isolato, past participle of isolare, the root of which was the Latin insulātus & insulātes (made into an island), from insula (island).  From circa 1740, English at first used the French isolé (rendered as isole) which appeared also as isole'd in the 1750s, isolate the verb emerging in the 1830s; isolated the past participle.  Isolation is now the most familiar form, the suffix –ion is from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis), appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action.  Words with similar meanings, often varying by context, includes solitude, desolation, confinement, segregation, remoteness, privacy, quarantine, sequestration, aloofness, detachment, withdrawal, exile, aloneness, concealment, retreat, hiding, reclusion, monkhood, and seclusion.

Isolation, Social Phobia and Social Anxiety Disorder

As long ago as 400 BC, Greek physician Hippocrates (circa 460–c 370 BC) noted there were people who sought social isolation, describing them as those who "love darkness as life" adding, in a hint at later understandings of mental illness, they tended also to "think every man observes them."  Such folk doubtless pre-dated antiquity, being always part of organized societies but it wasn’t until the late nineteenth century when psychiatry emerged as a distinct field that the particular human condition came to be known as social phobia or social neurosis, then thought of as a descriptor of extremely shy patients who sought isolation by choice.

Desolate: an emo in isolation.

Despite the increasing medicalization of the spectrum of the human condition, it wasn’t until 1968, in the second edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II), that social isolation was described as a specific phobia of social situations or excessive fear of being observed or scrutinized by others but at this point the definition of social phobia was very narrow.  With the release in 1980 of the DSM-III, social phobia was included as an official psychiatric diagnosis although it restricted the criteria, noting those who sought social isolation did so because of a fear of “performance situations” and did not include fears of less formal encounters such as casual conversations.  Those with such broad fears were instead to be diagnosed with “avoidant personality disorder” which, for technical reasons defined within the DSM-III, could not be co-diagnosed as social phobia, an attitude reflecting the editors’ view that phobias and neuroses needed specifically to be codified rather than acknowledging there existed in some a “general anxiety” disorder.  This neglect was addressed in the 1987 revision to the DSM-III (DSM-III-R) which changed the diagnostic criteria, making it possible to diagnose social phobia and avoidant personality disorder in the same patient.  In this revision, the term "generalized social phobia" was introduced.  DSM-IV was published in 1994 and the term “social anxiety disorder” (SAD) replaced social phobia, this reflecting how broad and generalized fears are in the condition although the diagnostic criteria differed only slightly from those in the DSM-III-R.  The DSM-IV position remains essentially current; the modifications in the DSM-5 (2013) not substantively changing the diagnosis, altering little more than the wording of the time frame although the emphasis on recognizing whether the experience of anxiety is unreasonable or excessive was shifted from patient to clinician.

For some, COVID-19 isolation was a business opportunity.

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and panic disorder (PD) were formalized when DSM-III was released in 1980 although among clinicians, GAD had for some years been a noted thread in the literature but what was done in DSM-III was to map GAD onto the usual pattern of diagnostic criteria.  In practice, because of the high degree of co-morbidity with other disorders, the utility of GAD as defined was soon a regular topic of discussion at conferences and the DSM’s editors responded, the parameters of GAD refined in subsequent releases between 1987-1994 when GAD’s diagnostic criteria emerged in its recognizably modern form.  By the time the terminology for mental disorders began in the nineteenth century to be codified, the word anxiety had for hundreds of years been used in English to describe feelings of disquiet or apprehension and in the seventeenth century there was even a school of thought it was a pathological condition.  It was thus unsurprising that “anxiety” was so often an element in the psychiatry’s early diagnostic descriptors such as “pantophobia” and “anxiety neurosis”, terms which designated paroxysmal manifestations (panic attacks) as well as “interparoxysmal phenomenology” (the apprehensive mental state).  The notion of “generalized anxiety”, although not then in itself a diagnosis, was also one of the symptoms of many conditions including the vaguely defined neurasthenia which was probably understood by many clinicians as something similar to what would later be formalized as GAD.  As a distinct diagnostic category however, it wasn’t until the DSM-III was released in 1980 that GAD appeared, anxiety neurosis split into (1) panic disorder and (2) GAD.  When the change was made, the editors noted it was a response to comments from clinicians, something emphasised when DSM-III was in 1987 revised (DSM-III-R), in effect to acknowledge there was a class of patient naturally anxious (who might once have been called neurotic or pantophobic) quite distinct from those for whom a source of anxiety could be deduced.  Thus, the cognitive aspect of anxiety became the critical criterion but within the profession, some scepticism about the validity of GAD as a distinct diagnostic category emerged, the most common concern being the difficulty in determining clear boundaries between GAD, other anxiety-spectrum disorders and certain manifestations of depression.

The modern label aside, GAD has a really long lineage and elements of the diagnosis found in case histories written by doctors over the centuries would have seemed familiar to those working in the early nineteenth century, tales of concern or apprehension about the vicissitudes of life a common thing.  As psychiatry in those years began to coalesce as a speciality and papers increasingly published, it was clear the behaviour of those suffering chronic anxiety could culminate in paroxysmal attacks, thus it was that GAD and panic attacks came to be so associated.  In English, the term panophobia (sometimes as pantaphobia, pantophobia or panphobia) dates from 1871, the word from the Late Latin pantŏphŏbŏs, from the Ancient Greek παντοφόβος (all-fearing (literally “anxiety about everything”)).  It appears in the surviving works of medieval physicians and it seems clear there were plenty of “pantophobic patients” who allegedly were afraid of everything and it was not a product of the Dark Ages, Aristotle (384-322 BC) in the seventh book of his Nicomachean Ethics (350 BC) writing there were men “…by nature apt to fear everything, even the squeak of a mouse”.

The first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I (1952) comprised what seems now a modest 130 pages.  The latest edition (DSM-5-TR (2022)) has 991 pages.  The growth is said to be the result of advances in science and a measure of the increasing comprehensiveness of the manual, not an indication that madness in the Western world is increasing.  The editors of the DSM would never use the word "madness" but for non-clinicians it's a handy term which can be applied to those beyond some point on the spectrum of instability.

Between Aristotle and the publication of the first edition of the DSM in 1952, physicians (and others) pondered, treated and discussed the nature of anxiety and theories of its origin and recommendations for treatment came and went.  The DSM (retrospectively labelled DSM-I) was by later standards a remarkably slim document but unsurprisingly, anxiety was included and discussed in the chapter called “Psychoneurotic Disorders”, the orthodoxy of the time that anxiety was a kind of trigger perceived by the conscious part of the personality and produced by a threat from within; how the patient reacted to this resulted in their reaction(s).  There was in the profession a structural determinism to this approach, the concept of defined “reaction patterns” at the time one of the benchmarks in US psychiatry.  When DSM-II was released in 1968, the category “anxiety reaction” was diagnosed when the anxiety was diffuse and neither restricted to specific situations or objects (ie the phobic reactions) nor controlled by any specific psychological defense mechanism as was the case in dissociative, conversion or obsessive-compulsive reactions. Anxiety reaction was characterized by anxious expectation and differentiated from normal apprehensiveness or fear.  Significantly, in DSM-II the reactions were re-named as “neuroses” and it was held anxiety was the chief characteristic of “neuroses”, something which could be felt or controlled unconsciously by various symptoms.  This had the effect that the diagnostic category “anxiety neurosis” encompassed what would later be expressed as panic attacks and GAD.

A: Excessive anxiety and worry (apprehensive expectation), occurring more days than not for at least 6 months, about a number of events or activities (such as work or matters relating to educational institutions).

B: The patient finds it difficult to control the worry.

C: The anxiety and worry are associated with three (or more) of the following six symptoms:

(1) Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge.

(2) Being easily fatigued.

(3) Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank.

(4) Irritability.

(5) Muscle tension.

(6) Sleep disturbance (difficulty falling or staying asleep, or restless, unsatisfying sleep).

The key change really was for the criteria for GAD requiring fewer symptoms. Whereas with the DSM-IV-TR (2000) individuals needed to exhibit at least three physical and three cognitive symptoms for a diagnosis of GAD, under DSM-5 (2013), only one of each was required so not only was the accuracy and consistency of diagnosis (by definition) improved, the obvious practical effect was better to differentiate GAD from other anxiety disorders and (importantly) the usual worries and concerns endemic to the human condition.  The final significant aspect of the evolution was that by the time of DSM-5, GAD had become effectively a exclusionary diagnosis in that it cannot be diagnosed if the anxiety is better explained by other anxiety disorders and nor can GAD be caused directly by stressors or trauma.

Isolastic

Isolastic (pronounced ahy-soh las-tik)

An engine-mounting system developed for the Norton Commando motorcycle.

1967: The construct was iso- + e(lastic).  The prefix iso- is from the Ancient Greek, a combining form of ἴσος (ísos) (equal).

Elastic (also as elastik) was from the mid seventeenth century French (coined as part of the technical language of chemistry to describe gases “having the property of recovering its former volume after compression”), from the New Latin elasticus (expanding spontaneously), the construct being the Ancient Greek elast(ós) (a late variant of elatós (ductile, beaten (of metal)) and derivative of elaúnein & elân (beat out, forge, render from metal)) + -icus (-ic-).  The Greek elastos (ductile, flexible) & elaunein are of uncertain origin but some speculate the source was the primitive Indo-European base ele- (to go).  Elastic (and elastik) came to be applied to solids after the 1660s in the sense of "possessing the nature to return to the form from which it is stretched or bent after the applied force is removed".  Figurative use to describe things as diverse as the principles of politicians or statistical properties emerged by 1859 and the most widely used modern form, the noun meaning "piece of elastic material" (originally a cord or string woven with rubber) dates from 1847 as an invention of American English.  The noun elasticity (the property of being elastic) dates from the 1660s, either from the French élasticité or else as the ad-hoc construction from elastic + -ity.  The adjective inelastic began in 1748 as part of the jargon of physical science and engineering meaning “not restored to original shape after responding to strain" and was simply the technical antonym of elastic while the figurative sense of "rigid, unyielding" dates from 1867 but general use didn’t endure as the word became associated with fields such as economics.

In scientific use, the prefix iso- was used to indicate “equal (as in isometric, isobar, isocyanic acid et al); having equal measurements”.  As a word and abbreviation, iso had its quirks even before it became popular oral shorthand to refer to the various states of isolation imposed during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The use to describe the specifications of standards (eg ISO 9001 et al) defined by the Organisation internationale de normalisation (International Organization for Standardization) leads many to believe ISO is an acronym or initializm.  However, the organization notes that when founded, it was given approved the short form “ISO”, a nod to the Ancient Greek ἴσος (ísos) (equal), the implication being the equalization (ie standardization) of rules and terminology across jurisdictions.  Despite that, there appears to be no documentary evidence to support the pedigree of the name and most folk who give the matter a moment’s thought probably assume it means “International Standards Organization”.

In film and television production, an “iso” is an isolated camera (a camera used to isolate a subject, usually for instant replay, a use dating from 1967 in sports broadcasting).  In executive salary packaging, tax minimization etc, an ISO incentive stock option) is a right extended to an employee to buy shares of company stock at a discounted price (the realized profit on which are taxed usually at a concessional rate).  In a number of sports, iso is used as a clipping of isolation to refer to tactical plays and in category theory it’s a clipping of isomorphism (morph a back-formation from morpheme, from the Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ) (form, shape).  In optics, isochromatic (iso- +‎ chromatic) refers to "possessing the same colour or wavelength; of or corresponding to constant colour".  Chromatic was from either the French chromatique (chromatic) or directly from its etymon the Latin chrōmaticus, from Ancient Greek χρωματικός (khrōmatikós) (relating to colour; one of the three types of tetrachord in Greek music), from χρῶμα (khrôma), (colour; pigment; chromatic scale in music; music), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European ger- (to grind; to rub; to stroke; to remove), presumably in the sense in which pigments were found.

1966 Iso Grifo Spyder (left), 1971 Iso Fidia (centre) & 1973 Iso Grifo 7 Litre (penthouse).

Iso Autoveicoli SpA (subsequently several times re-named) was an automobile and motorcycle maker in Italy, active between 1939-1974, their most fondly remembered cars from the 1960s & 1970s being sold under the Iso brand.  The Iso name was derived from the company’s pre-war origin in Genoa as a manufacturer of refrigeration units when it was called Isothermos, the construct being iso + thermos, from the Ancient Greek θερμός (thermós) (warm), the implied sense being "something which maintains the correct temperature".  In 2022, the corporate name is IsoRivolta and it continues to operate as a low-volume manufacturer.

The suffix -ic was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); a doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulfurous acid (H₂SO₃).

Norton's isolastic engine mounting

Norton Featherbed frame.

Powerful as the engines were, much of the success in competition Norton’s motorcycles enjoyed in the 1950s were attributable to the “Featherbed” frame, introduced in 1950.  Designed with twin parallel rectangular loops, each formed from a single length of Reynolds steel tubing with crossed-over welded ends which met a securely braced headstock at the front and swinging arm mountings to the rear, the Featherbed frame was stiff, strong and surprisingly light and proved resistant to even sever road and transmission stresses.  It was state of the art but that state reflected the technology of the late 1940s and as the years went by, engine speeds, displacement and compression ratios increased so power and torque rose, imposing mechanical stresses and, most significantly, vibration levels became so pronounced that the big Norton twin-cylinder bikes were becoming less attractive to buyers; while all the power and torque was admired, for many it was rendered unusable by all the shaking which had to be endured at a wide range of engine speeds.

Norton Commando frame.

A new engine was the obvious solution but, despite years of success, by the early 1960s, the whole British motorcycle industry was under-capitalized and nothing emerged; Norton’s bankruptcy surprised few.  Re-structured in 1966 as Norton-Villiers Ltd, it was still obvious a new engine was needed to remain competitive and this was pursued but the engineers suggested a new frame might be a stop-gap solution while engine development proceeded.  Most attractive was that a new frame should cheap and fast to create.  Afforcing the engineering staff, even with a German nuclear physicist who had once worked for Rolls-Royce, work proceeded quickly even though the Featherbed’s box-frame approach was abandoned in favor of a single, large diameter top tube that ran from the top of the steering tube to the seat struts with a short, angled gusset (made from a tube of the same dimension) was incorporated to triangulate the steering/top tube connection.  Two smaller diameter tubes extended from the bottom of the steering tube, running underneath the engine-gearbox unit where, connected by the centre stand’s mounting tube, they curved upwards to meet the seat struts at the rear suspension top fixing brackets.  The frame was completed by a triangulation of the rear section, achieved by using two more tubes which ran from the rear engine-gearbox unit mounting bracket to midway along the large top tube.

As intended, the new frame was light and the torsional strength (the resistance to twisting) was even higher than the engineers’ theoretical calculations had projected.  The design imperatives had been surprisingly simple, a kind of “back to basics” approach which (1) ensured the relation between the front & rear wheels remained constant regardless of the roughness of the surface, and 2) the higher loadings were Imposed only on the straight tubes, the bent portions of the frame are stressed.  Most innovative was the isolastic mounting system for the engine-gearbox unit (which the factory initially dubbed “GlideRide”.  Although essentially an admission the vibrations inherent in big, twin-cylinder engines couldn’t (then) be fixed, they could substantially be isolated to the unit and not transmitted through the frame to the rider.  At the core of the problem was that as a crankshaft rotates, the engine’s centre of gravity describes a heart-shaped path around the crankshaft axis, the engine therefore tending to oscillate around that path.  What the isolastic system did was provide the engine with three suspension points: (1) at the front, (2) at the top-rear of the gearbox and (3) at the cylinder head.  The mountings were large because of the vibration they needed to absorb but with a torsional stiffness provided by a rigidity in the side mountings, the idea being that the engine must be free to move in the plane of the crankshaft but without twisting in the frame.

1972 Norton Commando 750 Combat.

When the Norton Commando was launched in 1967, the combination of frame and the isolastic engine-gearbox mounting system proved the inherent vibration problem associated with big twins, if not solved, had been artfully concealed.  The early implementations of both the isolastic plumbing and the frame did reveal some weaknesses but these problems quickly were solved and both enjoyed a decade long life, over 60,000 Commandos produced between 1976-1977.  However, the clever improvisation (driven by financial necessity) really just delayed the inevitable as the manufacturers from the Far East had proven their modern, four-cylinder concepts were a better direction for the high performance motorcycle.  In the ten years the Norton Commando was on sale, the Japanese improved their products while the British tinkered at the edges and by the time the last Commando was made, the superiority it once enjoyed in road-holding and handling had evaporated.  The British industry never recovered from the mistakes made during the 1960s and 1970s.

Concord & Concorde

Concord or Concorde (pronounced kon-kawrd)

(1) Agreement between persons, groups, nations, etc.; concurrence in attitudes, feelings, etc; unanimity; accord; agreement between things; mutual fitness; harmony.

(2) In formal grammar, a technical rule about the agreement of words with one another (case, gender, number or person).

(3) A treaty; compact; covenant.

(4) In music, a stable, harmonious combination of tones; a chord requiring no resolution.

(5) As concordat, under Roman-Catholic canon law, a convention between the Holy See and a sovereign state that defines the relationship between the Church and the state in matters that concern both.

(6) In law, an agreement between the parties regarding land title in reference to the manner in which it should pass, being an acknowledgment that the land in question belonged to the complainant (obsolete).

(7) A popular name for locality, commercial operations and products such as ships, cars etc.

(8) In horticulture, a variety of sweet American grape, named circa 1853 after Concord, Massachusetts, where the variety was developed.

1250-1300: From the Middle English and twelfth century Old French concorde (harmony, agreement, treaty) & concorder, from the Latin concordare & concordia, (harmonious), from concors (of the same mine; being in agreement with) (genitive concordis (of the same mind, literally “hearts together”)).  The construct was an assimilated form of com (con-) (with; together) + cor (genitive cordis (heart) from the primitive Indo-European root kerd (heart)).  The "a compact or agreement" in the sense of something formal (usually in writing) dates from the late fifteenth century, an extension of use from the late fourteenth century transitive verb which carried the sense "reconcile, bring into harmony".  From circa 1400 it had been understood to mean "agree, cooperate, thus a transfer of sense from the Old French & Latin forms.  Concorde was the French spelling which eventually was adopted also by the British for the supersonic airliner after some years of linguistic squabble.  Concord is a noun & verb, concordance & concordat are nouns, concorded & concording are verbs and concordial & concordant are adjectives; the noun plural is concords.

The Concorde and other SSTs

Promotional rendering of Concorde in British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) livery.  BOAC was the UK's national carrier between 1940-1974 when merged with British European Airways (BEA) to form British Airways (BA).

Concorde was an Anglo-French supersonic airliner that first flew in 1969 and operated commercially between 1976-2003.  It had a maximum speed over twice the speed of sound (Mach 2.04; 1,354 mph (2,180 km/h)) and seated 92-128 passengers.  Man breaking the sound barrier actually wasn’t modern; the cracking of a whip, known for thousands of years, is the tip passing through the sound barrier and engineers were well aware of the problems caused by propellers travelling that fast but it wasn’t until 1947 that a manned aircraft exceeded Mach 1 in controlled flight (although it had been achieved in deep dives though not without structural damage).  The military were of course immediately interested but so were those who built commercial airliners, intrigued at the notion of transporting passengers at supersonic speed, effectively shrinking the planet.  By the late 1950s, still recovering from the damage and costs of two world wars, France and the UK were never going to be in a position to be major players in the space-race which would play-out between the US and USSR but civil aviation did offer possibilities for both nations to return to the forefront of the industry.  France, in the early days of flight had been the preeminent power (a legacy of that being words like fuselage and aileron) and UK almost gained an early lead in passenger jets but the debacle of the de Havilland Comet (1949) had seen the Boeing 707 (1957) assume dominance.  The supersonic race was thought to be the next horizon and the UK’s Supersonic Transport Aircraft Committee (STAC) was in 1956 commissioned with the development of a Supersonic Transport (SST) for commercial use.

The committee’s early research soon established it was going to be an expensive undertaking so the UK sought partners; the US declined but in 1962 the UK and France signed the Anglo-French Concorde agreement, a framework for cooperation in the building of the one SST.  The choice of name actually came some months after the engineering concord was signed, the manufacturers submitting to the UK cabinet the names Concord and Concorde, it being thought desirable to have something which sounded and meant the same in both languages (the French had already agreed it shouldn’t be called the Super-Caravelle the project name for a smaller SST on which some work had been done in 1960).  The other suggestions put to cabinet were Alliance or Europa.  In the cabinet discussions in London, Alliance was thought to be "too military" and Europa offended those Tories who still hankered for the "splendid isolation" which had been the British view on European matters in the previous century.  Even in the nineteenth century age of Pax Britannica splendid isolation had been somewhat illusory but in the Tory Party the words still exerted a powerful pull.  

Concorde 001 roll-out, Toulouse Blagnac airport, 11 December 1967.

There is some dispute about whether the cabinet ever formally agreed to use the French spelling but, like much in English-French relations over the centuries, the entente proved not always cordial and the name was officially changed to Concord by UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (later First Earl Stockton, 1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) in response to him feeling slighted by Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970; President of France 1958-1969) when Le President vetoed the UK’s application to join the European Economic Community (the EEC which evolved into the present Day EU of which the UK was a member between 1973-2020).  However, the Labour party won office in the 1964 general election and by the time of the roll-out in Toulouse in 1967, the UK’s Minister for Technology, Tony Benn (Anthony Wedgwood Benn, 1925–2014, formerly the second Viscount Stansgate) announced he was changing the spelling back to Concorde.  There were not many eurosceptics in the (old) Labour Party back then.

Concorde taking off, 1973 Paris Air Show, the doomed Tupolev Tu-144 is in the foreground.

The engineering challenges were overcome and in 1969, some months before the moon landing, Concorde made its maiden flight and, in 1973, a successful demonstration flight was performed at the same Paris air show at which its Soviet competitor Tupolev Tu-144 crashed.  Impressed, more than a dozen airlines placed orders but within months of the Paris show, the first oil shock hit and the world entered a severe recession; the long post-war boom was over.  A quadrupling in the oil price was quite a blow for a machine which burned 20% more fuel per mile than a Boeing 747 yet typically carried only a hundred passengers whereas the Jumbo could be configured for between four and five hundred.  That might still have been viable had have oil prices remained low and a mass-market existed of people willing to pay a premium but with jet fuel suddenly expensive and the world in recession, doubts existed and most orders were immediately cancelled.

Eventually, only twenty were built, operated only by BOAC (BEA/BA) and Air France, early hopes of mass-production never materialized; while orders were taken for over a hundred with dozens more optioned, the contracts were soon cancelled.  By 1976 only four nations remained as prospective buyers: Britain, France, China, and Iran; the latter two never took up their orders and by the time Concorde entered service, the US had cancelled their supersonic project and the Soviet programme was soon to follow.  Even without the oil shocks of the 1970s and the more compelling economics of wide-bodied airliners like the Boeing 747, there were problems, the noise of the sonic boom as the speed of sound was exceeded meaning it was impossible to secure agreement for it to operate over land at supersonic speed.  Accordingly, most of its time was spent overflying the Atlantic and Pacific and BA and Air France sometimes made profit from Concorde only because the British and French governments wrote off the development costs.  Concorde was an extraordinary technical achievement but existed only because the post-war years in the UK and France were characterised by national projects undertaken by nationalised industries.  Under orthodox modern (post Reagan cum Thatcher) economics, such a thing could never happen. 

On 25 July 2000, Air France Flight 4590, bound for New York, crashed on take-off out of Paris, killing all one-hundred and nine souls on board and four on the ground. It was the only fatal accident involving Concorde, the cause determined to be debris on the runway which entered an engine, causing catastrophic damage.  In April 2003, both Air France and British Airways announced that they would retire Concorde later that year citing low passenger numbers following the crash, the slump in air travel following the 9/11 attacks and rising maintenance costs.

Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap (1998)

Fictional works are usually constructed cognizant of physical reality and technological innovations have always influenced what's possible in plot-lines.  The cell phone for example offered many possibilities but also rendered some situations either impossible or improbable (although Hollywood has sometimes found either of those no obstacle in a screenplay).  The retirement of Concorde also had to be noted.  Not only had it long been used as a symbol of wealth but there was also the speed so plot-lines which included the relativities of the duration of commercial supersonic versus subsonic trans-Atlantic travel were suddenly no loner possible.  Lindsay Lohan's line in The Parent Trap (1998) since 2003 (and for the foreseeable future) is a relic of the Concorde era.     

Tupolev Tu-144 (NATO reporting name: Charger).

The Tu-144 was the USSR’s SST and it was the first to fly, its maiden flight in 1968 some months before Concorde and sixteen were built.  It was also usually ahead of the Anglo-French development, attaining supersonic speed twelve weeks earlier and entering commercial service in 1975 but safety and reliability concerns doomed the project and its reputation never recovered from the 1973 crash.  The Soviet carrier Aeroflot introduced a regular Moscow-Almaty service but only a few dozen flights were ever completed, the Tu-144 withdrawn after a second crash in 1978 after which it was used only for cargo until 1983 when the remaining fleet was grounded.  It was later used to train Soviet cosmonauts and had a curious post-cold war career when chartered by NASA for high-altitude research.  The final flight was in 1999.

Boeing 2707.

While perfecting supersonic military aircraft during the early 1950s, Americans had explored the idea of SSTs as passenger aircraft and had concluded that while it was technically possible, in economic terms such a thing could never be made to work and that four-engined jets like the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC8 were the future of commercial aviation.  However, the announcement of the development of Concorde and the Soviet SST stirred the Kennedy White House into funding what was essentially a vanity project proving the technical superiority of US science and engineering.  Boeing won the competition to design an SST and, despite also working on the 747 and the space programme, it gained a high priority and the 2707 was projected to be the biggest, fastest and most advanced of all the SSTs, seating up to three-hundred, cruising at Mach 3 and configured with a swing-wing.  Cost, complexity and weight doomed that last feature and the design was revised to use a conventional delta shape.  But, however advanced US engineering and science might have been, US accountancy was better still and what was clearly an financially unviable programme was in 1971 cancelled even before the two prototypes had been completed.

Lockheed L-2000.

Lockheed also entered the government-funded competition to design a US SST.  Similar to the Boeing concept in size, speed and duration, it eschewed the swing-wing because, despite the aerodynamic advantages, the engineers concluded what Boeing would eventually admit: that the weight, cost and complexity acceptable in military airframes, couldn’t be justified in a civilian aircraft.  As the military-industrial complex well knew, the Pentagon was always more sanguine about spending other people's money (OPM) than those people were about parting with their own.  Lockheed instead used a slightly different compromise: the compound delta.  After the competition, Boeing and Lockheed were both selected to continue to the prototype stage but in 1966 Boeing’s swing-wing design was preferred because its performance was in most aspects superior and it was quieter; that it was going to be more expensive to produce wasn’t enough to sway the government, things being different in the 1960s.  Reality finally bit in 1971.

Depiction of a Boom Overture.

In mid-2021 US airline United announced plans to acquire a fleet of fifteen new supersonic airliners which they expected to be in service by 2029.  It wasn’t clear from the press release what was the most ambitious aspect of the programme: (1) that the Colorado company called Boom, which has yet to achieve supersonic flight, would be able to produce even one machine by 2029, (2) that the aircraft can be delivered close to the budgeted US$200 million unit cost, (3) that what United describe as “improvements in aircraft design since Concorde” will reduce and mitigate the sonic boom, (4) that it won’t be “any louder than other modern passenger jets while taking off, flying over land and landing”, (5) that sufficient passengers will be prepared to pay a premium to fly at Mach 1.7 in a new and unproven airframe built by a company with no record in the industry or that (6) Greta Thunberg (b 2003) will believe Boom which says Overture will operate as a "net-zero carbon aircraft".

Unlikely to approve: Greta Thunberg.

The suggestion is the Overture will run on "posh biodiesel" made from anything from waste cooking fat to specially grown high-energy crops although whether this industry can by 2029 be scaled-up to produce what’s required to service enough of the aviation industry to make either project viable isn’t clear.  Still, if not, Boom claims "power-to-liquid" processes by which renewable energy such as solar or wind power is used to produce liquid fuel will make up any shortfall.  Boom does seem a heroic operation: they expect the Overture to be profitable for airlines even if tickets are sold for the same price as a standard business-class ticket.  One way or another, the path the Boom Overture follows over the next few years is going to become a standard case-study in university departments although whether that's in marketing, engineering or accountancy might depend matters beyond Boom's control.

Closet

Closet (pronounced kloz-it)

(1) A small room, enclosed recess, cupboard or cabinet for storing clothing, food, utensils etc.

(2) A small private room, especially one used for prayer, meditation etc.

(3) A state or condition of secrecy or carefully guarded privacy.

(4) A clipping of “closet of ease” and later “water closet” (WC), early names for the flushing loo (toilet; lavatory; privy with a waste-pipe and means to carry off the discharge by a flush of water).

(5) Of or pertaining to that which is private; secluded or concealed; undertaken unobserved and in isolation.

(6) To shut up in a private room for some purpose.

(7) A private room used by women to groom and dress themselves (obsolete).

(8) A private room used for prayer or other devotions (archaic).

(9) A place of (usually either fanciful or figurative in that typically it referred to the state of thought rather than where it took place) contemplation and theorizing (archaic).

(10) The private residence or private council chamber of a monarch accompanied by a staff establishment (page of the chamber; clerk of the closet et al) and related to the bedchamber (archaic).

(11) In a church, a pew or side-chapel reserved for a monarch or feudal lord (regarded as obsolete but the concept endures in that the order of precedence is often used when seating is allocated for ceremonial events conducted in churches).

(12) In heraldry, an ordinary similar to a bar but half the width.

(13) A sewer (Scots dialectical, now obsolete).

1300-1350: From the Middle English closet (a small private room for study or prayer), from the Old French closet (small enclosure, private room), the construct being clos (private space; enclosure) +‎ -et (the suffix used to form diminutives), from the Latin clausum (closed space, enclosure, confinement), the neuter past participle of claudere (to shut).  In French, it tended to be applied to small, open-air enclosures.  The suffix –et was from the Middle English -et, from the Old French –et & its feminine variant -ette, from the Late Latin -ittus (and the other gender forms -itta & -ittum).  It was used to form diminutives, loosely construed.  Some European languages picked up the Old French spelling while others used variations including Czech (klozet) & Spanish (clóset).  Closets can be tiny or fair-sized rooms so the appropriate synonym depends on context and architecture and might include: cabinet, container, locker, room, vault, wardrobe, bin, buffet, depository, receptacle, recess, repository, safe, sideboard, walk-in, ambry, chest of drawers & cold storage.  Closet is a noun, verb & adjective, closeting is a verb (which some dispute) & adjective (plural closets) and closeting is a noun & verb.  The noun plural is closets.

The adjective dates from the 1680s in the sense of “private, done in seclusion”, extended by 1782 as "fitted only for scholarly seclusion, not adapted to the conditions of practical life" (ie in the sense of the “ivory tower”).  The meaning "secret, not public, unknown" was first applied to alcoholism in the early 1950s but by the 1970s had come to be used principally of homosexuality.  This, and the earlier forms (closet anarchist, closet alcoholic, closet Freemason, closet smoker et al) were all based on the idiomatic “skeleton in the closet” (which existed also as “skeleton in the cupboard”), describing some undisclosed fact which, if revealed would cause reputational damage (or worse) to a person.  Literally, the imagery summoned was of someone with a human corpse secreted in a closet in their house, one which had sat there so long the flesh had decomposed to the bone.  The earliest known appearance in print was in 1816 but it’s not known how long it’d been in oral use and it usually implied culpability for some serious offence though not necessarily anything involving a corpse.

Lindsay Lohan's walk-in closet.  To optimize space utilization, the hangers are very thin and covered with black velvet to ensure no fabrics are marked.  In a well-organized closet, items can be arranged in a number of ways such as color, season or type and Ms Lohan does it by manufacturer, the name of the label printed on rail-tags.

The phrase “come out of the closet” (admit something openly) was first recorded 1963 and the use rapidly became exclusive to homosexuals and lent a new meaning to the word “out”.  This meaning itself became nuanced: “To come out” (openly avowing one's homosexuality) emerged as a phrase in the 1960s and was an overtly political statement (obviously different from the earlier “a confessed homosexual” whereas “outing” and “outed” came to be used in the 1970s to refer to people making the homosexuality of others public knowledge.  Outing became controversial because of the argument (made sometimes by those within the gay community) that it was justified if exposing hypocrisy (usually a conservative politician who publicly condemned homosexuality while in private indulging in the practice).  In Spanish use (most notably in Latin America) the noun clóset is used to refer to the state of being secretly gay (from salir del clóset), the plural being clósets.

Lindsay Lohan in another part of her walk-in closet, here choosing what to pack for an appearance at the Cannes Film Festival, May 2014.

The verb closet (shut up as in a closet) was originally usually for purposes of concealment or private consultation and dates from the 1680s.  The water closet (WC and described also in the delightful phrase “closet of ease”) was the ancestor of the familiar modern loo (toilet; lavatory; privy with a waste-pipe and means to carry off the discharge by a flush of water), the term first used in 1755 and later perfected by the famous plumber, Mr Thomas Crapper.  The phrase “walk-in” was used first in the 1890s as a slang term by hotel check-in clerks to refer to those arriving without a reservation (it’s now a standard statistical category in hotels) and by 1928 was used in many forms of commerce to mean “customer who arrived without an appointment”.  The “walk-in closet” was first advertised in the US in 1946 where it described a built-in wardrobe large enough to walk into, some equipped with mirrors, tables, chairs etc).

The Gay Bob Doll

Gay Bob with man-bag.

There’s evidence that for much of human existence, homosexuality has been at least widely tolerated and often accepted but in the West, under the influence of the Christian churches, it came to attract much disapprobation though even in the nineteenth century there were those who (without much success) campaigned for legislative and social change, the odd self-declared homosexual sometimes urging others to out themselves.  However, it wasn’t until the 1960s that the still embryonic “gay liberation” movement understood that “coming out en masse” was of importance because with critical mass came political influence.  Social attitudes did change and it was perhaps an indication of acceptance that in 2005 the cartoon show South Park could run an episode called Trapped in the Closet in which the Scientologist film star Tom Cruise (b 1962) refuses to come out of a closet.  Not discouraged by the threat of writs, South Park later featured an episode in which the actor worked in a confectionery factory packing fudge.  Attitudes and legislative changes didn't always move in unison and things unfolded gradually but that process was still incomplete when, in 1977, the Gay Bob doll was released.

Clothes and accessories were available, including those for dressing the “gay farmer”.

The winds of change were clearly blowing by 1977 because in that year Harvey Milk (1930–1978; member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, 1978) became the first openly gay man elected to public office in California (and it’ll never be known how many of his predecessors were still in the closet).  However, if Milk was out of the closet, Gab Bob came neatly packaged in his own (cardboard) closet buyers able to out him and put him back as required.  Designed to look like popular film stars of the era, Gay Bob’s creator described the doll as perfect for “…an executive’s desk, dash board ornament, the attaché case, the bathtub rim or a health club gym bag”, a notable feature was the doll’s “anatomical correctness”, presumably a sales feature but one which necessitated production being out-sourced to Hong-Kong because US manufacturers declined the contract. 

Gay Bob stepping out of the closet.

Just so there were no misunderstandings, Gay Bob was supplied with a fashion catalog which contained an explanation:  Hi boys, girls and grownups, I’m Gay Bob, the world’s first gay doll.  I bet you are wondering why I come packed in a closet. “Coming out of the closet” is an expression which means that you admit the truth about yourself and are no longer ashamed of what you are.  Gay people are no different than straight people.  If everyone came out of their closets, there wouldn’t be so many angry, frustrated, frightened people.  It’s not easy to be honest about what you are, in fact it takes a great deal of courage.  But remember, if Gay Bob has the courage to come out of his closet, so can you!

Popular since the nineteenth century, mail-order was the on-line shopping of the analogue era.

Conservative activists were of course appalled by Gay Bob, his anatomical correctness and his threateningly optimistic message, describing it all as “a threat to family values” and more “…evidence of the desperation the homosexual campaign has reached in its effort to put homosexual lifestyle, which is a death style, across to the American people”.  The forces of capitalism either agreed or were unwilling to risk a backlash because attempts have the big department stores stock Gay Bob on their shelves were unsuccessful so the doll was sold via mail order, advertisements placed in gay magazines.  One doll cost US$19.50 (including shipping and handling within the US) while a pair could be purchased at a discounted US$35 (and to take advantage of the anatomical correctness, buying a brace was presumably in vogue.  Over two thousand were sold within months and in liberal New York and San Francisco, some boutiques would later carry the product.  Something of a footnote to the LGBTQQIAAOP timeline, Gay Bob is a now a collector’s item, examples in good condition realizing over US$200 at on-line auction sites and of course, those with a pristine, un-violated closet will command a premium.