Lotus

Lotus (pronounced loh-tuhs)

(1) In Greek mythology, a plant believed to be a jujube or elm, referred to as yielding a fruit that induced a state of forgetfulness and a dreamy languor in those who ate it.

(2) Any aquatic plant of the genus, Nelumbo nucifera, of the water lily family, having shield-like leaves and showy, solitary flowers usually projecting above the water.

(3) Any of several water lilies of the genus Nymphaea.

(4) A decorative motif derived from such a plant and used widely in ancient art, as on the capitals of Egyptian columns.

(5) Any shrubby plant of the genus Lotus, of the legume family, having red, pink, yellow, or white flowers.

(6) An English manufacturer of lightweight sports and racing cars, best known for its successes in Formula One between 1962-1978.

1530–1540:  From the Classical Latin, lōtus or lōtos, perfect passive participle of lavō (wash), from the Ancient Greek λωτός (lōtós) (the lotus plant), the origin of which is unknown but thought probably related to Semitic plant names such as Hebrew לוט‎ (lōt) (myrrh).  The feminine was lōta, the neuter lōtum.  The circa 1500 lote was an Englished form of lotus and it survives as Lote-tree.  The yogic sense is attested from 1848.

From the 1540s, the name was, rather casually, bestowed on many plants, some related, some not even alike and that had been the pattern of the Greek lōtós which was applied to several plants before it came exclusively to mean Egyptian white lotus (a sense attested in English from 1580s), a plant prominent part in the mythology of India, Egypt, China.  The Homeric lotus later was held to be a North African shrub, from which "a kind of wine" can be made and historians conclude that was a reference to the effects rather than the taste.  The name has also been given to several species of water-lilies and a bean that grows in water.   The noun lotion is from the circa 1400 Middle English loscion (liquid preparation for application to the skin), from the fourteenth century Old French lotion, from the Latin lotionem (nominative lotio) (a washing), a noun of action from lotus (varied contraction of lavatus (a popular form of lautus, past participle of lavere (to wash) from the primitive Indo-European root leue- (to wash)).

The circa 1600 noun lotophagi (literally “lotus-eaters”) was from the Greek lotophagoi (plural), the construct being lotos + -phagos (eating), from the primitive Indo-European root bhag- (to share out, apportion; to get a share), the more common literary form of which was lotophagous.  The lotus was believed to induce a dreamy forgetfulness, hence the mention of the lotus-eater as "one who finds pleasure in a listless life" (1812) from the Greek lotophagoi, mentioned in book IX of Homer’s Odyssey.  Odysseus had to force his lethargic sailors back on board after the lotus-eaters had shared with them the narcotic fruit.  It’s one of the earliest warnings against drug use.

Of the plural

Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson at a charity fundraiser for the Children’s Miracle Network, Lotus Lounge,  Washington DC, October 2008.

The use of plural forms in English is not consistent, though the wise attempt always to append just s or es as required.  This linguistic pragmatism (or Anglo-Saxon laziness if you prefer) simplifies things and plurals like stadia and referenda, while not extinct, are probably now archaic.  That said, plurals can sometimes need to end in an i, aux or a, often more for elegance than sticking to the rules.  Rare plurals persist because they’re useful within niche communities; scientists and statisticians being punctilious in the use of datum, the rest of us calling all such stuff, singular or plural, data.  Patterns of use in English, if of sufficient longevity (though not of necessity breadth of adoption), can re-define words borrowed from other languages.  The modern English agenda (from the Latin agenda (things that ought to be done)) is now singular, the plural being agendas and the individual components, items.  In the original, agenda was plural of agendum.  However, criterion is singular and criteria plural; any other use is a more recent lapse and remains wrong.  English is best evolving its own rules.  Lotuses isn’t pretty which is a good a reason as any for a word to vanish but under Latin rules the plural would be loti which is no better but anyway, lotus is of Greek origin.  So, because both lotos and lotus appear in the Latin texts and the plural in Greek was oi, not i, lotoi is in the same documents.   That’s also why which is why the persistent octopi is wrong and that’s a shame because it’s better than the standard English plural which is octopuses.  However, octopus comes from the Ancient Greek; the correct plural form is octopodes.

By 1968, the makers of the Lotus Formula One and sports cars responded to having their machinery called Loti and Lotaux by issuing a press release advising the company would henceforth adopt Lotus as both plural and possessive and hinted everyone should do the same.  Lotus thought all others, including the historically correct Lotuses, “horrible words”.  The press release had no effect.

The footnote: The Lotus 43

BRM H16 engine.

The change from the 1.5 litre (92 cubic inch) voiturette formula (1961-1965) to a 3.0 litre (183 cubic inch) displacement for the 1966 Formula One season meant not only would the teams need new engines but also bigger, stronger chassis.  Lotus had an advantage in solving the latter problem because it was able to modify the Lotus 38 which had won the 1965 Indianapolis 500 when fitted with a 4.2 litre (256 cubic inch Ford V8).  The 38 was a strong and adaptable design, many of the elements of which would be incorporated into the later Lotus 49 and many racing cars of the era were to some extent Lotus 38 clones.  For an engine, for a number of reasons, Lotus choose to use the BRM H16, a unit created by reconfiguring the successful 1.5 litre BRM V8 into a 180^o (flat) configuration and mounting one atop another, thereby creating a 3.0 litre H16 which had the advantage of a relatively short development cycle because so many existing components were able to be used but the drawbacks were weight, size and height.

BRM H16 in Lotus 43.

Although commendably short, the H16 was tall which meant a high centre of gravity, something exacerbated by having to mount the block high in the chassis to permit sufficient clearance for the exhaust systems of the lower banks of cylinders.  It was also wide, too wide to fit into a monocoque socket and thus was taken the decision to make the engine an integral, load-bearing element of the chassis.  There was no other choice but that aspect worked well.  Had the H16 had delivered the promised horsepower the Lotus 43 might have been a success but the numbers were never realized.  The early power output was higher than the opposition but it wasn’t enough to compensate for the drawbacks inherent in the design and, these being so fundamental they couldn’t be corrected, the only hope was even more power.  The path to power was followed and modest increases were gained but it was never enough and time ran out before the plan to go from 32 to 64 valves could come to fruition, an endeavor some suggested would merely have “compounded the existing error on an even grander scale.”  Additionally, with every increase in power and weight, the already high fuel consumption worsened.

Lotus 43, US Grand Prix, Watkins Glen, 1966.

In winning the 1966 US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, the Lotus 43 delivered the H16 its sole victory, something BRM never managed when the engine was mounted in their chassis.  The 1.5 litre BRM V8 had enjoyed outstanding reliability but of the forty times the H16 started a race, twenty-seven ended prematurely.  The irony of the tale is that in the two seasons BRM ran the 400 horsepower H16 with its sixteen cylinders, two crankshafts, eight camshafts and thirty-two valves, the championship in both years was won by the Repco-Brabham, its engine with 320 horsepower, eight cylinders, one crankshaft, two camshafts and sixteen valves.  Adding insult to the exquisitely bespoke H16’s injury, the Repco engine was based on an old Oldsmobile block which General Motors had abandoned several year earlier (the engine blocks used by Brabham could be purchased by any customer for around US$20, a number which must have astonished outfits like Scuderia Ferrari).  After two seasons the H16 venture was retired, replaced by a conventional V12; Lotus sold the two 43s to a privateer who installed 4.7 liter (289 cubic inch) Ford (Windsor) V8s and campaigned them in Formula 5000 events.  The new Lotus 49 used the 3.0 litre Ford Cosworth (DFV) V8, a combination which enjoyed, remarkably, three successful seasons.

Elan

Elan (pronounced ay-lahn (U) or e-lan (non-U))

(1) Dash; impetuous ardor; a combination of style and vigour.

(2) In astronomy, as ELAN, the acronym of Enormous Lyman-Alpha Nebula (large gas cloud (nebula) larger than galaxies, found in intergalactic space).

1875–1880: From the Modern French, from the Middle French eslan (a dash, rush), noun derivative of éslancer to (dart).  Élan was thus a deverbal of élancer, the construct being é- (from the Old French es-, from Latin ex- & ē- (the prefix indicating away, moving away from) +‎ lan(cer) (from Old French lancier, from the Late Latin lanceāre, present active infinitive of lanceō, from the Latin lancea.  It was related to the Catalan llançar, the Italian lanciare, the Occitan and Portuguese lançar and the Spanish lanzar.  The sense is best understood by comparison with the French élancer (to throw forth) from the Classical Latin lancea (lance), the Roman auxiliaries' short javelin; a light spear or lance.  Ultimate root is thought to be Celtic/Celtiberian, possibly from the primitive Indo-European plehzk- (to hit) and connected also to the Ancient λόγχη (lónkhē).

Lindsay Lohan in hijab and halal make-up at the inaugural London Modest Fashion Week (LMFW), staged by London-based fashion house Haute Elan, February 2018.

Haute Elan is an interesting example of the novel corporate structures made possible by the distributed connectivity of the internet, acting as an umbrella organization for designers and distributers (output) and a kind of clearing house, offering a conduit for access and enquiries by media and customers (input).  For designers, the attraction is the association with a platform which can reduce the cost of promotional activities while allowing a brand to be built.  Pragmatically, it also reduces the cost of failure.

The companion word is the noun éclat (brilliant display or effect), also used by Lotus as a model name (Types 76 & 84; 1975-1982).  For elan, there’s really no exact single-word synonym in English, the closest including animation, ardor, dash, flair, impetus, life, oomph, panache, spirit, style, verve, vigor, vim, zest, zing, brio, esprit & impetuosity.  The usual spelling in English is elan and it’s often used with a modifier (eg “a certain elan”); the alternative spelling is the French élan.  The alternative spelling is the French élite and use of the French pronunciation the "U" ay-lahn rather than the "non-U" e-lan is one of the "class identifiers" on which readers of publications like Country Life focus when meeting folk.

The Lotus Elan

1962 Lotus Elan S1 DHC.

Lotus introduced the Elan in 1962, production continuing in four series until 1973, a companion four-seat (though really a 2+2) version made for a further two years.  Unlike the its predecessor, the exquisite Elite, the Elan would be offered as a convertible, the range adopting the English nomenclature of the time, the roadster a drop-head coupé (DHC, Type 26 (later 45)) and the closed version, introduced in 1966, a fixed-head coupé (FHC, Type 36).  

Lotus Elan chassis.

Abandoning the expensive and troublesome monocoque shell of the Elite, the Elan used a steel backbone chassis, the body this time a multi-piece affair, made again from fibreglass but using techniques which made it cheaper to manufacturer while maintaining quality; Lotus would use this method of construction for almost three decades.  Just as important was that for the first time, there would be imposed some rigor in standardization and production-line rationalization.  Profits flowed. 

Mrs Emma Peel (Diana Rigg (1938–2020)) in The Avengers (1965–1968).  1966 Lotus Elan S3 DHC. 

Overcoming the fragility of the Elite did come a cost and that was weight, the 1,500 lb (680 kg) Elan heavier by about 385 lb (175 kg) but by any other standard, the new car was still lithe and to compensate, there was more power.  One prototype Elite had been built the new 1.5 litre "Lotus Twin Cam" engine, based on the mundane but lively and tough Ford Kent four-cylinder unit, transformed by the addition of an in-house designed, aluminum double overhead camshaft (DOHC) head and this was adopted as the Elan’s power-plant.  In the Lotus community, some regard the two-dozen odd 1.5 litre cars built as something like prototypes, all subsequent Elans built with 1.6 litre engines although the specifications and power outputs would vary according to improvements made and detuning demanded by emission control laws in some markets.   Like the Kent itself, the DOHC would enjoy a long life in both Ford and Lotus vehicles.

1968 Lotus Elan S3 FHC.

Dynamically, the Elan was from the start acclaimed, even compared to more expensive machines, the performance, handling and economy were the best compromise of the era, the steering especially praised; indeed, that’s one aspect of the Elan which has rarely been matched.  The more professional approach to cost-control and production line efficiencies brought benefits beyond the quality of the cars, Lotus for the first time a genuinely profitable operation, the revenue generating funds not only new models but also the Formula One program of the 1960s which would be the company’s golden era, yielding multiple driver’s and constructor’s championships.  The corollary of being a successful road car however meant it had to be built to appeal to a wider market than the highly strung Elite which had been more at home on the track than the street.  Accordingly, Lotus never envisaged a racing career for the new car, its suspension tuned softly enough to cope with the bumps and undulations of the real world better than the dainty Elite which was at its best exploring its limits on the billiard table-like surface of a racetrack.

1965 Lotus Type 26R.

Owners were however convinced of its potential and around the world, in both standard and unmodified form, the Elan was soon a popular race-car and the factory began to receive requests for parts suitable for competition.  The customer being always right, Lotus responded, factory support soon forthcoming, culminating as early as 1964 in a racing version, the type 26R which featured lighter components, a strengthened drive-train, stiffer suspension, better brakes and more horsepower from a BRM-built engine.

1971 Lotus Elite Sprint DHC.

For the road cars, upgrades were frequent, a detachable hardtop soon offered and luxuries inconceivable in the Elite, such as lush carpeting, walnut trim and electric windows appeared at intervals.  Power increases over the years appear modest, the early versions rated at 105 bhp (78 kW) and the most potent at 126 bhp (94 kW) and there were variations as laws changed but the general trend was upwards.

1975 Lotus Elan +2S 130/5.

The Elan had been very much in the cottage-industry Lotus tradition, offered even in kit form for owners to assemble themselves, a practice which lasted until 1973 when changes to the UK’s value added tax (VAT, the UK’s consumption tax) rendered the practice unviable.  Very different and a harbinger of the Lotus of the 1970s was the Elan +2 (Type 50), introduced in 1967.  Available only as a FHC, although visually inspired by the Elan, the +2 was wider, built on a longer wheelbase and included two rear seats, although the legroom meant they were suitable only for young children.  That however was the target market: the young men (and increasingly, even then, women), for whom a newly arrived family would otherwise have compelled a purchase from another manufacturer after outgrowing their Elan.  Never a big seller, it filled the same niche as Jaguar’s 2+2 E-Type and was popular enough to remain on sale for two years after Elan production ended in 1973, the last versions the most desirable, fitted with the five-speed gearbox included on a handful of the final Elan Sprints.

Well made imitation, the 1989 Mazda Maita (MX-5).

The Elan name was revived for a run of sports cars produced between 1989-1995 which were said to be very good but, being front-wheel drive with all that implies, didn’t capture the imagination in the same way.  The Elan was also the template for Mazda’s very successful MX-5 (labelled in some markets variously as the Roadster or Miata), one of the more blatant pieces of far-east plagiarism, Mazda’s design centre known to have obtained at least two original Elans to study.  A typical Japanese product, the 1989 MX-5 corrected all the Elan’s faults and is probably as close to perfect as any car ever made.

Concatenate

Concatenate (pronounced kon-kat-on-ate)

(1) In biology, joined together, as if in a chain.

(2) In general use, to link things together; unite in a series or chain.

(3) In computing, the joining together of two or more objects stored in different places; most familiar as the spreadsheet command(s) invoked to join cells.

(4) In formal language, as string concatenation, the operation of joining character strings end-to-end.

1425-1475: From the late Middle English (as a past participle) from the Late Latin concatēnātus, from the perfect passive participle stem of concatēnāre (to link together), the construct being con- (com-) (with, together) + catenare, from catēnō (chain, bind) or catēna (chain) + -ātus (from the Proto-Italic -ātos, from the primitive Indo-European –ehztos and was the suffix used to form adjectives from nouns indicating the possession of a thing or a quality).  Related forms include concatenator & concatenation (nouns), concatenated & concatenating (verbs & adjectives) and concatenative (adjective).  Those who use the undo function on their spreadsheet after concatenating are using the verb deconcatenate and the adjective unconcatenating.  Concatenate the adjective has a longer history than the verb. The adjective first appeared in English in the fifteenth century, the not until the seventeenth.  Catenate, a verb in its own right meaning "to link in a series" also has origins in the 1800s.  Concatenate is a verb & adjective, concatenated, concatenating are verbs and concatenation is a noun; the noun plural is concatenations.

Lotus 123/G running under OS/2 1.2, 1989.

Concatenate is the favorite big word of most accountants, the others preferring avoidance.  For most people not engaged in certain specialised fields, it’s only when using a spreadsheet that the chance exists to use the word concatenate although it’s now often optional, Microsoft in Excel 2016 having added the CONCAT function which does all that CONCATENATE ever did.  The old command remains as a courtesy to those (1) who think the old ways are best or (2) have a stash of macros and add-ins laden with the text but there’s no guarantee both will continue to co-exist in future versions.  Both IBM and Microsoft have often had short and long versions of commands in software.  From the earliest versions of PC-DOS and MS-DOS, there were pairs like copy/cpy and delete/del which behaved identically.

The spreadsheet is regarded as the original “killer app”; the software which suddenly made rational the purchase of a computer for those not before seduced or at least convinced.  The first spreadsheet which really was a viable piece of horizontal-market shrink-wrap was Visicalc which, like the hardware on which it ran now seems limited but, unlike the operating system on which it ran, is conceptually identical and visually, vaguely similar to the latest releases.  Visicalc, launched in 1979 on the Apple II, two years before the IBM PC went on sale, came first but it was the more ambitious Lotus 1-2-3 which gained critical mass, assuming almost from its 1983 debut a market dominance which would last more than a decade.  By 1989, the standard office environment for those running PCs was overwhelmingly the Lotus 123 2.x / WordPerfect 5.x combination, the nerdiest operations perhaps adding the dreaded dBASE III Plus.

Microsoft Windows 3.0, 1990.

In what was one of the early disruptions in the business, things quickly changed.  In 1990, Microsoft Windows 3.0 was introduced, an unstable operating environment bolted on to DOS and soon famous for its UAEs (Unrecoverable Applications Errors), the BSODs (blue screen of death) of the era.  Fragile it may have been but it made the PC usable for real people in a way a command-line based user interface like DOS never did and by the time Windows 3.1 arrived in 1992, the move was on.  Microsoft were ready and Windows 3.1, combined with the updated Excel and Word for Windows sounded the death knell for Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, both of which were murdered, dBASE more of a suicide as any user of dBASE IV will attest.  The old programs would struggle on, under new ownership, for years, Lotus 1-2-3 lasting until the twenty-first century and a much diminished WordPerfect to this day though neither would ever regain their place in the commercial mainstream.

A concatenation of images of variations in Lindsay Lohan's hair color.

Both failed adequately to react to Windows 3.0, WordPerfect pursuing an evolutionary development of their text-based platform while Lotus followed what turned out to be the right technology but the wrong company.  Almost from the start, Lotus had been besieged by user requests for a way to allow spreadsheets to be bigger and that needed a way for the program to access more memory.  Because of (1) the way DOS was written and (2) the memory address limitations of the early (80x86 & 80x88) hardware, not even all of the 1 MB nominally available could be used and it took not long for spreadsheet users to exhaust what was.  New hardware (80286 & 80386) made more memory available but DOS, really a brutish file-loader, couldn’t see it and the costs of re-equipping with more capable hardware and software combinations were, in the 1980s, high.  There were quick and dirty fixes.  One was a cooperative venture between Lotus, Intel & Microsoft which published an expanded memory specification (LIM EMS), a clever trick allowing access to 4 MB of memory but which brought problems of its own.  Most users continued to create multiple sheets, linking them in a variety of ways, a complexity which was often error prone and, as things grew, increasingly difficult to debug.  It wasn’t just megalomaniacs who longed for everything in one big sheet.

IBM OS/2 2.1, 1993.

Windows 3.0 may not have impressed Lotus but OS/2, Microsoft’s slated long-term replacement for both DOS and Windows certainly did.  Available already with 16 MB of memory, later versions of OS/2 promised 4 GB, a big number then and enough even in 2021 for what most people do with spreadsheets, most of the time.  Lotus nailed 1-2-3’s colors to the OS/2 mast, the first version for the new platform, 123/G (for graphical), released in 1989 and running only on OS/2, did what it claimed and users were soon delighted by the sight (if not the speed) of the spread of their giant sheets.  Unfortunately, users were few because buyers of OS/2 were scarce, their reluctance not helped by Microsoft’s sudden change of operating system direction.  As surprised as everybody else at the massive success of Windows 3.0 and 3.1, Microsoft announced that instead of continuing their co-development of OS/2 with IBM, they were proceeding with Windows as a stand-alone product; existing versions of OS/2 on sale and under development (versions 1 & 2) would be handed back to IBM to pursue while Microsoft would work on their next release which was to have been called OS/2 3.0.  This was the product which would in 1993 be released as Windows NT 3.1. 

It was a high-risk strategy.  In the early 1990s, IBM was years away from its near-death experiences and was the industry behemoth; having them as a partner was not without difficulties but to make an enemy of them was riskier still.  The potential reward however was compelling.  The revenue stream from Windows would flow wholly to Microsoft and, more conspiratorially, having exclusive control of the operating system and its secrets meant the possibility to tweak its own software offerings so they would run better than the competition.  There is of course no suggestion Microsoft ever did that.  All depended on (1) Windows continuing its sales success and (2) the newer versions maintaining the cost/performance advantage over OS/2 which would prevent IBM’s product gaining critical mass.  That is exactly what happened.

Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, 1997.

While OS/2 technically was good and the compatibility issues feared by many never existed to the extent claimed, it simply didn’t offer enough of an advantage over Windows 3.x to justify what would for many be a significant cost in hardware, software and training.  Nor, as the track record with thing like the PCjr demonstrated, were IBM very good at selling stuff unless it was in lots of thousands to big corporations.  Microsoft offered things users were actually interested in, like free fonts whereas IBM fiddled around with exotica like installable file systems (IFS), a concept remote from the lives of most.  Compared with the actually clunky looking Windows 3.x, OS/2 with its IFS, pre-emptive multi-tasking and object-oriented user interface looked like the future of computing and so it was but Windows NT (ex OS/2 3.0) turned out to be a better path.  By the time Windows 95 was released in 1995, Microsoft had won the consumer war and within two years, Windows NT had laid the foundation not only to dominate the desktop in the twenty-first century but to displace Novell and others in the lucrative server market which underpinned the rapidly growing parts of the market, networks (WANs and LANs) and the internet.  In this clash of titans, WordPerfect, dBASE and Lotus were collateral damage.

Elite

Elite (pronounced ay-leet (U) or e-leet (non-U))

(1) The choice or best of anything considered collectively, as of a group or class of persons (often used with a plural verb).

(2) Historically, persons of the highest class (used with a plural verb).  Once associated mostly with high birth or social position (the aristocratic or patrician), it’s now a much applied and contested concept.

(3) A group of persons exercising the major share of authority or influence within a larger group.

(4) A typeface, approximately 10-point in printing-type size, widely used in typewriters and having 12 characters to the inch and now included in many digital font sets.

(5) Representing the most choice or select; best; of, relating to, or suitable for an elite; exclusive

1350–1400: From the Middle English (in the sense of "a person elected to office"), from the Middle French e(s)lit (chosen), feminine past participle of e(s)lisre & e(s)lire (to choose), from the Latin ēligere (to elect), the past participle electus; the source of the modern elect, election & related forms.  Variations are created as required such as anti-elite, global-elite, non-elite, power-elite & super-elite.  Words in a similar sense include exclusive, silk-stocking, aristocracy, celebrity, establishment, society, choice, cool, crack, elect, noble, pick, super, top, best, cream & gentility.  The alternative spelling is the French élite and use of the French pronunciation the "U" ay-leet rather than the "non-U" e-leet is one of the "class-identifiers" on which readers of publications like Country Life focus when meeting folk.

Use in English became more frequent after 1823 in the sense of "a choice or select body, the best part".  Earlier, in fourteenth century Middle English it had been borrowed from French with the meaning "chosen person" (and was used much in ecclesiastical documents to describe a bishop-elect) but had died out by the middle of the next century.  Elite was re-introduced to general use when it appeared by in Lord Byron's (1788-1824) epic poem Don Juan (1819-1824); it caught on and was by 1852 an adjective.  The noun elitism (advocacy of or preference for rule or social domination by an elite element in a system or society; attitude or behavior of persons who are or deem themselves among the elite) dates from 1951 and is an early example of the development of the language of critical theory which emerged, encouraged by the vast increase in the social sciences in the expanded universities of the post-war years.

IBM 12 Point Pitch 96 character "Golf Ball" Prestige Elite font for Selectric III Typewriter.

Introduced in 1961, the IBM Selectric (a portmanteau of select(ive) + (elect)ric)) was a landmark of modern industrial design and the last major advance in desktop document production before the word processor.  Built to the high standard for which IBM was once renowned, it allowed users to change font sets within seconds, simply by swapping the "element" which everybody except IBM staff (always in blue suits and white shirts) called "golf balls".  At the time the concept of a swappable character set was actually decades old and systems using flat, rotating "wheels" were the usual alternative approach but the Selectric did it best and in the 1960s there was still a enticing allure to the IBM name.  The most popular of the early fonts were Elite, Gothic & Courier (all available in several variations.  The first Elite typeface was released in 1920 and used by both typewriters and hot metal typesetting.  Prestige Elite (usually referred to as “Prestige” or “Elite”), was a monospaced typeface, created in 1953 for IBM and among the most popular of those available for the Selectric.  Optimized for the particular technology of the typewriter, Prestige Elite was characterized by the large x-height and moderate stroke thickness suitable for ribbon-based impact printing.  Unlike the similar Courier, the Elite sets did not transition to the digital age although TrueType, PostScript and other formats of variations of Elite are commercially available.

The rise in use of the adjective elitist (advocating or preferring rule or social domination by an elite element in a system or society; deeming oneself to be among the elite) is noted from the same era, the original adjectival examples including Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), and Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881).  The nous use quickly followed although some dictionaries insist it’s not attested until 1961.  The concept attracted much attention from sociologists exploring structures of power and the relationships between them, much discussed in Michael Young’s (1915-2002) The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958) although, while intended as a critique of a society increasingly divided between a skilled power-holding elite and a disenfranchised underclass of the less qualified, meritocracy, to the author’s disquiet, meritocracy (and meritocratic) evolved into a word with at least neutral and often positive connotations.

Shoes for elite feet: Lindsay Lohan in Isabel Marant Poppy Elite Suede Pumps in beige, New York City, August 2015.  Jeans for the elite now can affect the look of the tatterdemalion ("distressed" the industry term) which once was a mark of the clothing of the poor but they should include a label confirming their US$800 + cost, a particular art of "implied price-taggery". 

Charles Wright Mills (1916–1962 and usually styled C Wright Mills) was an American sociologist who published the much criticized but also influential The Power Elite (1956) which appears to have introduced the term to political criticism.  Mills took a structuralist approach and explored the clusters of elites and how their relationships and interactions works to enable them to exert (whether overtly or organically) an essentially dictatorial control over US society and its economy.  Mills, while acknowledging some overlap between the groups, identified six clusters of elites: (1) those who ran the large corporations, (2) those who owned the corporations, (3) popular culture celebrities including the news media, (4) the upper-strata of wealth-owning families, (5) the military establishment (centred on the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff) and (6), the upper echelons of government (the executives, the legislatures the judges, the senior bureaucracy and the duopoly of the two established political parties.  The overlaps he noted did not in any way diminish the value of his description, instead illustrating its operation.

Although criticized as being more a left-wing polemic than conventional academic research (something from which Mills really didn’t demur), The Power Elite aged well and influenced many, the famous caution President Eisenhower (1890–1969; president of the US 1953-1961) issued in his valedictory address warning of the “military-industrial complex” was quite Millsian and a helpful contribution to the library of structuralism.  Generations of sociologists and others would develop his idea of the new and shifting construct of a ruling class and culture.  In recent years, elite has become a term used (usually between elites) as an accusation; elite populists finding their base responsive to the label being applied to those of whom they're anyway most suspicious: journalists, scientists, academics etc. 

The Lotus Elite

1959 Lotus Elite S1.

The design of the Lotus Elite (Type 14, 1957-1963) was a catalogue of innovation, some of which would have an immediate effect on the industry though some would proved too difficult to implement in mass-production and, except for the most expensive, impossible profitably to pursue on a smaller scale.  Most distinctive was a technique borrowed from aviation, the stressed-skin glass-fibre unibody which obviated entirely the need for a chassis or space-frame, the body an integrated, load-bearing structure.  The only substantial steel components were a sub-frame supporting the engine and front suspension and a hoop to which was attached the windscreen, door hinges and jacking points.  In an indication of how much things have changed, the hoop was the extent of passenger protection.

Club sandwich: The Elite's triple-layer monocoque.

Even had all the components been produced in accordance with the specification, many parts of the structure were so close to the point of failure that some revisions to the design would anyway have been necessary but the early cars were far from perfect.  The contact for the fabrication of the bodies had been won by a boat-builder, then one of the few companies with much experience in molding fibreglass.  However, the Elite was a more complex design than a boat hull and fibreglass was still a novel material, even Chevrolet in the United States, with access to the financial and engineering resources of General Motors, found early in the production of the Corvette there were lessons still to be learned.  After the first 250-odd were built, Lotus became aware there were problems, the need for a fix urgent.  Cleverly, the body consisted of three stressed-fiberglass layers which, when joined in a monocoque, created the bulkheads and eight torsion boxes gave the structure its strength and stiffness although the success was something of a surprise.  The designer, working in the pre-CAD era and with no experience of the behavior of fibreglass, had doubted the material would be strong enough so had the first prototype built with some steel and aluminum plates sandwiched between the layers with mounting brackets bonded in points at the rear to support the suspension and differential mountings.  In subsequent tests, these proved unnecessary but so poorly molded were many of the layers that structural failures became common, the resin porings of inconsistent thickness creating weaknesses at critical points, suspension struts and differentials known to punch themselves loose from mountings or even tear away chunks of the supposedly supporting fibreglass.

1962 Lotus Elite S2.

Needing an operation more acquainted with the tight tolerances demanded in precision engineering, Lotus switched suppliers, the molding contract granted to the Bristol Aeroplane Company. This transformed quality control and the remaining 750-odd Elites carried an S2 designation, the early cars retrospectively (but unofficially) dubbed S1.  Even so, despite the improved, lighter and stiffer shell, it would be another generation before the structural implications of fibreglass would fully be understood and the flaws inherent in the design remained, suspension attachment points sometimes still prone to detachment, Lotus content to the extent it now happened only under extreme loading rather than habitually.

Coventry Climax FWE, 1962 Lotus Elite S2 SE.

Improbably, the power-plant was the 1.2 litre Coventry Climax FWE (Fire-Water-Elite), an all-aluminum inline four cylinder engine which began life as the FWA (feather weight automotive), derived from a water-pumping unit for the UK Government’s fleet of fire-trucks but, small, light and robust, when tuned, it proved ideally suited to motorsport.  The first derivative for competition was the FWB, the unexpected fork prompting Coventry-Climax to rename to versions still used on fire-trucks to FWP (P=Pump).  The FWE was produced especially for the Elite but its qualities attracted a number of specialist race-car builders and in historic racing, the little powerhouse remains competitive to this day.

Nürburgring 1000 km, May 1962 (Hunt / Buxton (DNF)).

The combination of light-weight, a surprisingly powerful engine and a degree of aerodynamic efficiency which few for decades would match delivered a package with a then unrivalled combination of performance and economy.  On the road, point-to-point, it was able to maintain high average speeds under most conditions and only in then unusual places like the German autobahns with their unlimited speeds could heavier, more powerful machines assert their advantage.

Le Mans 24 Hour, June 1959.  Lotus Elite #41 (Lumsden / Riley) leads Ferrari 250TR #14 (Gendebien / Hill). The Ferrari (DNF) retired after overheating, the Elite finishing eighth overall, winning the 1.5 litre GT class.

On the circuits, it enjoyed an illustrious career, notable especially for success in long-distance events at the Nürburgring and Le Mans.  The frugal fuel consumption was an important factor too, as well as claiming five class trophies in the Le Mans 24 hour race, the Elite twice won the mysterious Indice de performance (an index of thermal efficiency), a curious piece of mathematics actually designed to ensure, regardless of other results, a French car would always win something.

Lotus Elite (Leo Geoghegan), Phillip Island, 1960.  That year an Elite would win the Australian GT Championship, contested on the Mount Panorama circuit at Bathurst. 

One problem however was never solved: profitability.  It was something which would plague the UK’s low-volume manufacturers throughout the 1960s, for, whatever the design and engineering prowess available, there was often a lack of financial acumen and accounting skills, many companies never fully evolving from their cottage-industry origins in a back shed, their administrative structures still close to the family business they had once been.  Whether Lotus lost quite as much per Elite as the legend suggests isn’t known but it certainly wasn’t profitable.  Those lessons were learned and the replacement, while less intriguing a design, would be easier to build, more reliable in operation and, compared to the Elite, mass-produced.  The replacement was called the Elan.

1975 Lotus Elite 503 (Type 75).

The Elite name was reprised.  Between 1974-1982, the Elite (Types 75 & 83) was one of a number of the then fashionable wedge-shaped designs which would litter the decade.  Effectively replacing the Elan +2, the new Elite was big and heavy by earlier standards, its performance in some aspects inferior to the Elan but it was a difficult era and many manufacturers with more resources did worse.  Later variations of this were called the Eclat and Excel but, like much of what was done in the 1970s, none are remembered with great fondness.

Lotus Elite Concept, 2010.

More promising was the Elite Concept, shown in 2010.  Hardly original, and actually derivative in just about every way, it nevertheless tantalized all with a specification list including Toyota’s fine 5.0 litre Lexus V8 but any hope of a production version vanished after one of the many corporate restructures undertaken in the wake of the global financial crisis (GFC, 2009-2011).

Jazz

Jazz (pronounced jaz)

(1) A style of music of African-American origin, said to have emerged in New Orleans early in the twentieth century.

(2) A style of dance music, popular especially in the 1920s, arranged for a large band and marked by some of the features of jazz.

(3) Dancing or a dance performed to such music, as with jerky bodily motions and gestures.

(4) In slang (1) liveliness; spirit; excitement, (2) insincere, exaggerated, or pretentious talk & (3) similar or related but unspecified things or activities (often in the form “…and all that jazz”) which can be used negatively if referring to rigmarole, red-tape etc.

(5) Of or relating to or characteristic of jazz; to play (music) in the manner of jazz.

(6) To excite or enliven; to accelerate (often in the form “jazz up”).

(7) In vulgar slang, copulation.

1912: An invention of US English of uncertain origin.  Until around the end of the World War I, the alternative spellings jaz, jas, jass & jasz were used.  The first documented use of the word jazz was in 1912 in the context of writing about baseball baseball, the use extending to the musical form in 1915 when it was used in reference to Tom Brown's all-white band out of New Orleans (although there are sources which date it either from a 1917 advertisement in a Chicago newspaper for Bert Kelly's Jaz Band).

Lindsay Lohan watching NBA game between Utah Jazz and LA Lakers, Los Angeles November, 2006.

The etymology has attracted much research but the findings have been inconclusive, the most popular theory being jazz was a variant of jism & jasm (from 1842 & 1860 respectively), archaic nineteenth century US slang meaning “zest for accomplishment; drive; dynamism”, the qualities apparently most often ascribed to women), also words of unknown origin.  That evolutionary path is tangled up with the sexual connotations once associated with the word jazz and etymologists stress the sequence is important.  At the turn of the twentieth century, "gism" certainly meant "vitality" but also "virility" and this (by 1899) led to the slang use for "semen" but, the etymologists caution, while a similar evolution happened to the word "jazz" (which became slang for the act of sex), that use was unknown prior to 1918 so any sexual connotation wasn’t attached at the point of origin but acquired later.  The use in reference to baseball is thought to have been among white Americans and this may also have been the case in the earliest uses with the musical form.  Overlaying all this, nor is it known whether the evolution to jazz was organic, an invention or an imperfect echoic.

Duke Ellington, Ellington At Newport (1956).

While ethno-musicologists note the way the form has evolved over a century as diverse influences have variously been absorbed, assimilated or interpolated, the profession regards the core of Jazz to be a form rooted in West African cultural and musical expression which borrowed from the unique African American blues tradition.  Technically, the most distinct characteristics are blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms and, most celebrated of all, improvisation.  As jazz was influenced, so jazz influenced and there was no musical form so associated with the “fusion movement” (better understood as a number movements) which was a feature of the experimental (and increasingly commercial) output of the decades after the World War II, a trend which produced an array of labels including acid jazz, cool jazz, jazzbo, jazz-funk, jazz fusion, trad-jazz, jazz-rock and more.

Count Basie And His Orchestra, April In Paris (1957).

In idiomatic use context matters much because to jazz something can mean “to destroy” whereas to “jazz up” is to enliven, brighten up, make more colorful etc but this can be good or bad, the familiar phrase “don’t jazz it up to much” a caution against excessive bling or needless complication.  The use in vulgar slang is now listed by most dictionaries as either archaic or obsolete but when it use it covered a wide range from (1) the act of copulation, (2) to prostitute oneself for money & (3) semen.  As an intransitive verb it meant to move about in a lively or frivolous manner or “to fool around”, the origin of this assumed to be the uninhibited style of dancing sometimes associated with the genre.  To jazz someone can also be to distract or pester them or provide misleading or incorrect information (which can be referred to using the noun “the jazz”).  As applied simply to music, it can mean either to play jazz music (in some set form or in a jam) or to dance to jazz music

Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (1959).

The meaning "rubbish, unnecessary talk or ornamentation" dates from 1918, a use reflecting the snobby attitude many had towards a form of music which sometimes didn’t observe the usual conventions of structure.  The term “all that jazz” (sometimes cited as a synonym for “et cetera” but actually extending to ”similar or related but unspecified things or activities" was first recorded in 1939 although the extent of its history in oral use is unknown.  The verb jazz in the sense of “to speed or liven up” dates from 1917 and was used often as “jazzed” or “jazzing”.  The “jazz age” was first described in 1921 and soon popularized in the writings of F Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and the era is usually regarded as the years between the end of World War I (1918) and the Wall Street crash of 1929.  The phrase captures both what was seen as the accelerating pace of life in 1920s America and the popularity of the music.

Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um (1959).

The noun razzmatazz was interesting because it was used in the late nineteenth century to mean various things (most often something fanciful and showy) and thus obviously pre-dated jazz but, presumably because of the rhyming quality it picked up early associations with jazz which by the 1930s had become a disparaging critique ("old-fashioned jazz" especially in contrast to the newer “swing”).  Dating from 1917, the noun jazzbo (low, vulgar jazz) was a disparaging term to describe both the music and musicians; later in the twentieth century it was applied as derogatory term for African-Americans (and others with dark skins) but use soon died out.  The adjective jazzy (resembling jazz music) dates from 1918 and was often used in the forms “jazzily” & “jazziness”, use quickly extending from music to a general term suggesting “spirited, lively; exciting”.  The noun jazzetry (poetry reading accompanied by jazz music) came into use in 1959 and was part of the cultural ephemera of the beat generation.  The noun Jazzercise (the construct being jazz + (ex)ercise) was originally a proprietary name from the commercial fitness industry which, despite the implications, was used to describe routines using just about any form of music.

Lotus Jazz, 1985.

So unsuccessful was the marketing strategy used for Lotus Jazz that it’s said to rate with Ford’s Edsel and Coca-Cola's New Coke among the most popular case studies chosen by students of the discipline to illustrate corporate ineptitude.  Jazz was designed to run only on Apple’s Macintosh 512K and was an integrated suite which included a word processor, spreadsheet, database, graphics, and communication software.  It was a corporate companion of Lotus Symphony which was a suite which ran on IBM compatible PCs under PC-MS-DOS but not too much should be read into the musical nomenclature; both were integrated suites which ran under different operating systems on different hardware.  Lotus 1-2-3 wasn’t the first spreadsheet but it was the one which became the so-called “killer app” which legitimized the IBM PC for business use and, noting the small-scale successes being enjoyed by some of the early suites, Symphony was concocted as something which would rely on the reputation of 1-2-3 for its success.  Although never a big seller on the scale of 1-2-3, Symphony in the 1980s found a niche.

Jazz was supplied on four 400K floppy diskettes and Lotus thoughtfully supplied a sticky label users could use for their data diskette (which wasn’t included).

Jazz, introduced in 1985 was an attempt to replicate on the Mac the company’s success on the IBM-PC though why the decision was taken to introduce a suite instead of a version of 1-2-3 puzzled observers at the time given the Symphony name had nothing like the name-recognition of the Lotus spreadsheet.  Added to that, Jazz was expensive, limited in functionality by the memory constraint of the Mac 512 and clumsy in operation, users forced frequently to swap floppy diskettes (start-up, program & data) with the additional drawback that only a single floppy drive could be used with Jazz, neither dual floppy or hard-drives supported.  A critical and commercial failure, so toxic did the Jazz brand quickly become that plans to release an improved version in 1988 (called Modern Jazz) were abandoned and development resources were shifted to a version of 1-2-3 for the Mac.  That was of course what should have been done from the start and 1-2-3 for the Mac, released in 1991, was well received but months later Microsoft released Windows 3.1 and the universe shifted, Excel and the companion MS-Office becoming a juggernaut; Symphony and 1-2-3 were just two of the many victims.