Oiler

Oiler (pronounced oi-ler)

(1) A person or device which is some way delivers oil.

(2) A worker employed to oil machinery.

(3) Any of several devices, other than pressure devices, for feeding lubricating oil to a bearing.

(4) In oil exploration, a productive well.

(5) An oilcan.

(6) An oilskin garment, especially a coat.

(7) A ship which uses oil as fuel (archaic).

(8) In admiralty slang, an oil tanker used to refuel other vessels.

(9) In admiralty slang, an assistant in the engine room of a ship, senior only to a wiper, mainly responsible for keeping machinery lubricated (archaic).

(10) In the cleaning kits of firearms, a small (typically thumb-sized) metal container of oil, often containing an integral brush.

(11) As an ethnic slur (mostly southern US), a Mexican (sometimes extended to other of Latino appearance.

Circa 1290: The construct was oil + -er.  Oil was from the Middle English olyer, oyller & oyellere (the later alternative spellings included oylle, olie, oli, eoli, eoyle, olige, oyll, uile, oile & oyl.  Oyler was from the Anglo-Norman olie and the Old French oile, from the Latin oleum (olive oil), from the Ancient Greek ἔλαιον (élaion) (olive oil).  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.  The meaning “an appliance for distributing oil in machines" was in use by 1861 and was adopted by the British Admiralty in 1916 to describe "navy vessels carrying oil for use by other ships"; although such vessels had been in use for some years, the Royal Navy having begun the conversion from coal to oil a decade earlier, by 1911 only the submarine fleet ran exclusive on oil and coal (sometimes sprayed with oil) still fuelled most of the navy’s vessels.

Evolution of the Ford 427 side-oiler

The side valve (usually called “the flathead”, an allusion to the almost flat plate covering the combustion chambers) Ford V8 of 1932 is remembered for its vices as well as the many things which made it one of the great engines of the mid-century.  In the 1930s, those vices could be both forgiven and worked-around but by 1953, it was still in production and outdated (though in overseas production it would continue, in French Simca cars until 1961, in Brazilian Fords until 1964 and remarkably, until 1990 in the Simca Unic Marmon Bocquet military truck.  For 1954, Ford responded to the modern overhead valve (OHV) V8s others had introduced with the debut of two new engines, essentially (by the standards of the time) small and big block versions of the same design.  Known as the Y-Blocks because of the shape of the castings, they were sturdy pieces of machinery and addressed many of the problems identified in the flathead over two decades of production but neither was suited to the evolutionary path the American automobile would follow during the 1950s.

1962 Ford 406 FE V8 with 3 x 2 barrel carburetors.

That path was not one which anyone in Detroit was likely to foresee in the late 1940s when the design work on the Y-Blocks began but by 1954, it was at least competitive with the competition.  However, in 1955, Chevrolet introduced their small-block V8 which was light, compact and free-breathing, not something which could be said of the Y-Blocks and more importantly, the design afforded a potential for development which would play out over decades.  By contrast, the Y-Blocks’ potential in both capacity and power output soon plateaued and Ford was forced to resort to exotic solutions like supercharging, something not practical for low-cost mass-manufacturing.  Ford’s solution was not one new V8 but three.  All released during 1958, the SD (Super Duty, a large, low revving truck engine), the MEL (a big block for what were now very large Lincolns and Mercurys) and the FE (thought at the time a big-block but subsequently listed by pedants as a mid-block because later castings would out-weigh it by so much).  The durable SD would remain in the catalogue until 1980, its demise prompted only by the implications of the second oil-shock in 1979, the sole complaint about it being its prodigious thirst.  The MEL would last a decade, early attempts to use it on the race-tracks abandoned because of the penalty imposed by excessive weight although it did enjoy some success in powerboat racing where it’s capacity to run reliably at full throttle for sustained periods was highly valued.

1966 Ford 427 FE V8 side oiler with tunnel-port cylinder heads and Kar-Kraft transaxle, the specification used in the mid-engined Ford GT40s which recorded a 1-2-3 finish at that year's 24 Le Mans 24 hour classic.

Although rapidly it would earn a stellar reputation which endures to this day, Ford’s FE V8 engine didn’t enjoy a wholly auspicious start, associated as it was with the ill-fated Edsel (FE really did stand for “Ford-Edsel” despite some post-debacle attempts to suggest “Ford Engine” (the contemporary MEL decodes as Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln)).  However, whatever the problems of the Edsel, the use of the FE in some was not one.  Offered in its first few seasons in several displacements, the most produced in the 1960s would be the 352 & 390 cubic inch (5.8 & 6.5 litre) versions, both of which briefly were offered in high-performance versions until the decision was taken to develop such engines (to be used in competition) as a separate FE branch, the first fruit of which was the 406 (6.6 litre) which debuted in 1962.  The 406 had performed well on Ford’s test-rigs, its output slightly exceeding the engineers’ projections and when installed in the new, slippery bodies offered that year, the combination proved fast on the racetracks.  The power however came at the cost of reliability and the increasing speeds on the circuits had exposed weaknesses in the bottom-end, the main bearing caps “walking” when vibrations attained a certain resonance.  

By their bolts they shall be known.  By convention a "four bolter" was one with the four all into the boss while in a "cross bolter" two were in the boss and two into the block.  "Six bolters" (with four in the boss, two in the block) are now common.

The solution was to “cross-bolt” the caps; an additional two securing bolts (installed sideways through the block) per cap augmenting the pairs mounted in the conventional vertical position.  This approach, still widely used to this day, proved successful and was carried over when in 1963 the FE was further enlarged to 425 cubic inches (7.0 litre), Ford labelling the new mill the 427 to align it with the displacement limit used by both NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) and the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the International Automobile Federation and world sport’s dopiest regulatory body)).  However, greater capacity meant more power, higher speeds and increased heat and the 427 began to also to suffer, the higher internal pressures meaning lubrication to the now cross-bolted main bearings had become marginal.  Ford’s solution was to reverse the priority with which oil was delivered.  The original design (subsequently known as the “top oiler”) lubricated first the valve-train at the top of the engine, then the main bearings which supported the crankshaft.  The new process reversed this order and the design became known as the side-oiler: on one side of the block was cast an additional oil galley, the bulge the external distinguishing feature of the new arrangement.

By their oil galleys they shall be known: Lubrication systems of 1964 Ford 427 FE V8 top oiler (left) & Ford 427 FE V8 side oiler (right). 

Introduced in 1965, the side-oiling proved the final solution and the 427 became a paragon of reliability, powering even the Le Mans 24 hour winning GT40s in 1966 & 1967.  Today the 427 is perhaps best remembered as the power-plant in the Shelby American AC Cobra 427 (although some of those actually used the rather more tame FE 428) but in those happy days when one could tick a box and have what was essentially a racing engine installed in a road car, it was available also in full-sized machines (the Galaxie), intermediates (the Fairlane) and, at the tail-end of production, a few (by then somewhat toned down) were even put in the Cougar, Mercury’s Mustang-based take on the pony-car.  By then however, the side-oiler’s days were numbered because not only was it noisy, apt to be cantankerous and a bit of an oil-burner, the complex lubrication and cross bolting made it quite expensive to build, added to which the big bore was at close to the limit the FE block could accommodate so during the manufacturing process, even a slight shift in the casting cores meant a scrapped block.  Thus the attraction for most (non racing) purposes of the 428 with its smaller bore.

Hair oiler: Lindsay Lohan recommends Nexxus Hair Oil and provides the following technical recommendation for hair care products: "I would select three. I love the hair oil because I think we always tend to overdo putting products in our hair, so it's good to give it some rest and let it refresh and replenish. I love a hairspray that doesn't make your hair hard and crunchy. And so the Nexxus XXL Volume Spray does that—it holds, but it doesn't make your hair feel icky, and that's important to me. And then the Slick Stick is good because I mean, I'm always on the go and sometimes I just need it to look nice and chic and back and clean-looking. So that's perfect for that. These are actually products that I use and like."

As supplied ex-factory: Ford 427 SOHC on stand.

The side oiler also provided the basis for one engine which wasn’t exactly mythical because quite a few were built but remains mysterious because nobody seems quite sure how many, the consensus being it was somewhere in mid-three figures, the last of which (in a crate) wasn't sold until 1970 although production ended in 1967.  This was the 427 SOHC (single overhead camshaft (the “sock” in the slang of some)) which for all sorts of reasons never made it onto the circuits for which it was intended nor into even one road car, despite the wishes of many.  Popularly known as “the cammer”, even some sixty years on there’s still a mystique surrounding the cammer and if one can’t find an original for sale (one sold at auction in 2021 for US$60,000), from a variety of manufacturers it’s possible still to buy all the bits and pieces needed to build one (in a quirk of timing and the overlap of simultaneous product development, some of the very early SOHCs used the top oiler block although most were side oilers and the third party reproductions over the years have always been the latter).  Although the production numbers have never been verified (which seems strange given Ford's accounting system recorded everything which emerged with a serial number), what all agree is the horsepower of a stock SOHC was somewhere over 600, the number bouncing around a bit because there were versions with single and dual four barrel carburetors, different camshaft profiles and variations in the cylinder heads and while it never made it into a production car, it remains the ultimate FE.   

Comet

Comet (pronounced kom-it)

(1) In astronomy, a celestial body moving about the sun, usually in a highly eccentric orbit, most thought to consist of a solid frozen nucleus, part of which vaporizes on approaching the heat from Sun (or other star) to form a gaseous, luminous coma (the envelope of dust and gas, the most dramatic part of which is the long, luminous tail which streams away from the sun (under the influence of solar winds).

(2) In astronomy, a celestial phenomenon with the appearance of such a body.

(3) Any of several species of hummingbird found in the Andes.

(4) In slang, as “vomit comet”, a reduced-gravity aircraft which, by flying in a parabolic flight path, briefly emulates a close to weightless environment.  Used to train astronauts or conduct research, the slang derived from the nausea some experience.

(5) In figurative use (often applied retrospectively and with a modifier such as “blazing comet”), someone (or, less commonly, something) who appears suddenly in the public eye, makes a significant impact and then quickly fades from view, their fleeting moment of brilliance a brief but spectacular event.

1150–1200: From the Middle English comete, partly from the Old English comēta and partly from the Anglo-French & Old French comete (which in Modern French persists as comète), all from the Latin comētēs & comēta, from the Ancient Greek κομήτης (komḗtēs) (wearing long hair; ling-haired), the construct being komē-, a variant stem of komân (to let one's hair grow), from κόμη (kómē) (hair) + -tēs (the agent suffix).  The Greek was a shortened form of ἀστὴρ κομήτης (astēr komētēs (longhaired star)), a reference to a comet’s streaming tail.  The descendants in other languages include the Malay komet, the Urdu کومٹ (komeṭ) and the Welsh comed.  Comet, cometlessness, cometography, cometographer, cometology & cometarium are nouns, cometless, cometic, cometical, cometocentric, cometary, cometographical & cometlike (also as comet-like) are adjectives, cometesimal is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is comets.

Comets orbit the Sun along an elongated path and when not near the heat, the body consists solely of its nucleus, thought to be almost always a solid core of frozen water, frozen gases, and dust.  When near the sun, the nucleus heats, eventually to boil and thus release the gaseous and luminous coma (the envelope of dust and gas), the most dramatic part of which is the long, luminous tail which streams away from the sun (under the influence of solar winds).  The path of a comet can be in the shape of an ellipse or a hyperbola; if a hyperbolic path, it enters the solar system once and then leaves forever while if it follows an ellipse, it remains in orbit around the sun.  Astronomer divide comets into (1) “short period” (those with orbital periods of less than 200 years and coming from the Kuiper belt) and (2) “long-period” (those with an orbital period greater than 200 years and coming from the Oort cloud).

Before the development of modern techniques, comets were visible only when near the sun so their appearance was sudden and, until early astronomers were able to calculate the paths of those which re-appeared, unexpected.  Superstition stepped in where science didn’t exist and comets were in many cultures regarded as omens or harbingers of doom, famine, ruin, pestilence and the overthrow of kingdoms or empires.  It was the English astronomer, mathematician and physicist Edmond Halley (1656–1742; Astronomer Royal 1720-1742) who in 1682 published the calculations which proved many comets were periodic and thus their appearance could be predicted.  Halley's Comet, named in his honor, remains the only known short-period comet consistently visible from Earth with the naked eye and remains the world’s most famous; it last appeared in 1986 and will next visit our skies in 2061.

Comet wine: Non-vintage Alois Lageder Natsch4 Vigneti Delle Dolomiti.

Halley’s findings put an end to (most) of the superstition surrounding comets but commerce still took advantage of their presence.  A comet with a famously vivid tail appeared in 1811 and in that year, Europe enjoyed a remarkably pleasant autumn (fall) which was most conducive to agriculture and became associated with the abundant and superior yield of the continental vineyards.  For that reason, the vintage was called the “comet wine” and the term became a feature in marketing the product which emerged from any year in which notable comets were seen, a superior quality alleged (and thus a premium price).  Wine buffs say any relationship between the quality of a vintage and the travel of celestial bodies is entirely coincidental.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (2021) by Dr Heather Clark (b 1974).

One of things about the feminist cult which is now the construct of Sylvia Path (1932-1963) is that her mistreatment at the hands of her husband Ted Hughes (1930–1998; Poet Laureate 1984-2008) tends to obscure her work which many quite familiar with the story of her brief life will barely have read and that’s perhaps predictable, certainly for those for whom the lure of tales of tragic woman and brutish men is a siren.  As human tragedies go, her story is compelling: A precocious talent, the death of the father to whom she was devoted when only eight, the suicide attempt while a student and the burning ambition to write and be published.  Almost as soon as she met Ted Hughes she knew he was “my black marauder” and their affair was one of intense physicality as well as a devotion to their art, something which might have endured during their marriage (which produced two children) had Hughes not proved so unfaithful and neglectful.  In 1963, as an abandoned solo mother in a freezing flat during what entered history as London’s coldest winter of the century, she took her own life while her two babies slept nearby, becoming a symbol onto which people would map whatever most suited their purposes: the troubled genius, the visionary writer, a feminist pioneer and, overwhelmingly, a martyr, a victim of a man.  To his dying day, feminists would stalk literary events just to tell Hughes he had “Sylvia’s blood on his hands”.

So the story is well known and in the years since her death there have been a number of biographies, critical studies, collections of letters, academic conferences; given that, it’s seemed by the 2020s unlikely there was much more to say about one whose adult life spanned not even two decades.  For that reason the 1000-odd densely printed pages of Dr Heather Clark’s Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath was a revelation because, as the author pointed out, her life “has been subsumed by her afterlife” and what was needed was a volume which focused on what she wrote and why that output means she should be set free from the “cultural baggage of the past 50 years” and shown as “one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.”

Sylvia Plath in Paris, 1956.

Red Comet is thus far this century’s outstanding biography and a feminist perspective is not required to recognize that when reading her last poems (written in obvious rage but sustaining a controlled tension few have matched) that she was a profoundly disturbed woman.  Most clinicians who have commented seem now to agree her depression of long-standing had descended to something psychotic by the time of her suicide, a progression she seems to have acknowledged, writing to one correspondent that she was composing poetry “on the edge of madness”.  This is though a biography written by a professional literary critic so it does not construct Plath as tale of tragedy and victimhood as one might if telling the story of some troubled celebrity.  Instead, the life is allowed to unfold in a way which shows how it underpins her development as a writer, the events and other glimpses of the person interpolated into the progress of a text through drafts and revisions, each word polished as the poet progresses to what gets sent to the publisher.  Red Comet is not a book for those interested in how much blame Ted Hughes should bear for his wife killing herself and in that matter it’s unlikely to change many opinions but as a study of the art of Sylvia Plath, it’s outstanding.  Unlike many figurative uses of "comet", Plath continues to blaze her trail. 

Pre-production de Havilland Comet (DH 106) with the original, square windows, England, 1949 (left) and Comet 4 (Registration G-APDN) in BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation (1939-1974 which in 1974 was merged with BEA (British European Airways) and others to later become BA (British Airways)) livery, Tokyo (Haneda International (HND / RJTT)), Japan October 1960.

The term hoodoo is often attached to objects thought jinxed.  When the de Havilland Comet (DH 106; the first commercial jet airliner), within a year of its first flight in 1949, began to suffer a number of catastrophic in-flight accidents, newspapers wrote of the “Comet hoodoo”, something encouraged because, in the pre “black-box” era, analysis of aviation incidents was a less exact science than now and for some time the crashes appeared inexplicable.  It was only when extensive testing revealed the reason for the structural failures could be traced to stresses in the airframe induced aspects of the design that the hoodoo was understood to be the operation of physics.  Other manufacturers noted the findings and changed their designs, Boeing's engineers acknowledging the debt they owed to de Havilland because it was the investigation of the Comet's early problems which produced the solutions which helped the Boeing 707 (1957) and its many successors to be the successful workhorses they became.  As a footnote, by the time the Comet 4 was released in 1958 the problems had been solved but commercially, the project was doomed and reputational damage done.  Between 1949-1964, barely more than 100 were sold although many did provide reliable service until 1981 and the airframe proved adaptable, dozens of military variants produced, the most notable being the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod, a maritime patrol version which was in service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) until 2011.

It’s because of the lessons learned from the Comet hoodoo that the apertures of airliner windows have rounded edges, the traditional four-cornered openings creating four weak spots prone to failure under stress.  In the early 1950s there was much optimism about the Comet and had it been successful, it could have given the UK’s commercial aviation industry a lead in a sector which rapidly would expand in the post war years.  One who didn’t express much faith in his country’s capacity to succeed in the field was the politician Duff Cooper (1890–1954) who, shortly before taking up his appointment as the UK’s ambassador to France, was flying on an Avro York (a transport and civil adaptation of the Lancaster heavy bomber) and he noted in his diary: “I think the designer of the York has discovered the shape of an armchair in which it is quite impossible to be comfortable, if this is typical of the civil transport plane in which were are to compete against the US, we are already beaten.”  As Lindsay Lohan’s smiles indicate, as least on private jets, the seats are now comfortable.

Not quite an Edsel, not yet a Mercury: The 1960 Comet; it was an era of imaginative (other use different adjectives) styling (and at this time they were still "stylists" and not "designers").

The Mercury Comet, built in four generations between 1960-1969 and another between 1971-1977, had a most unusual beginning.  The Ford Motor Company (“FoMoCo”, Mercury’s parent corporation) had in the mid 1950s studied the five-tier (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac) branding used by General Motors (GM) and decided it too would create a five divisional structure (which by 1955 Chrysler had also matched).  The GM model dated from the 1920s and was called the “ladder” (GM at times had as many as nine rungs) and the idea was each step on the later would take a buyer into a higher price (and at least theoretically more profitable) range of models.  There was a time when this approach made sense but even in the 1950s when Ford embarked on their restructure it was beginning to fragment, the implications of which would become apparent over the decades.  Thus Ford ended up (briefly) with five divisions: Ford, Mercury, Edsel, Lincoln and Continental.  That didn’t last long and Continental was the first to go, followed soon by the still infamous Edsel and the corporation even flirted with the idea of shuttering Lincoln.

1963 Mercury Comet S-22 Convertible.

The original plan had been for the Comet to be the “small Edsel” but by the time the release date drew close, the decision had been taken to terminate the Edsel brand so the Q&D (quick & dirty) solution was to sell the car through the Lincoln-Mercury dealer network, an expedient which lasted for the 1960 & 1961 model years before the Comet was integrated into the Mercury range and badged appropriately.  The early Comets were built on the Falcon platform (“compact” in contemporary US terms) but when the 1966 range was released, the cars became “intermediates” (ie the size between the “compact” and “full-size” platforms).  The Comet name was withdrawn from use after 1969 but was in 1971 revived for Mercury’s companion to the Maverick, Ford’s replacement for the compact Falcon which slotted above the Pinto which was smaller, requiring the industry to coin the class-designation “sub compact”.  Cheap to produce and essentially a “consumer disposable”, the Maverick and Comet proved so popular they continued in production for a season even after their nominal replacements were in showrooms.

1967 Mercury Comet Cyclone "R Code", one of 60 built that year with the 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) FE side-oiler V8 and one of the 19 with a four-speed manual transmission.

The Mercury Comet has never attracted great interest from collectors because few were built with the more robust or exotic drive-trains found more frequently in both the competition from GM & Chrysler and the companion versions from Ford.  The mid-range performance package for the general market was the Comet Cyclone, introduced in 1964 to replace the Comet’s earlier S-22 option; neither were big sellers but they were not expensive to produce and remained profitable parts of the Mercury range.  In 1968, during the peak of the muscle car era, Mercury sought to promote the line, dropping the Comet name and promoting the machines as the “Cyclone”, now with quite potent engines although the emphasis clearly was drag racing rather than turning corners; the high performance package was now called the “Cyclone Spoiler”.  For the NASCAR circuits however, there was in 1969 the Cyclone Spoiler II, one of the so-called “aero cars”, the better known of which were the much more spectacular, be-winged Dodge Daytona (1969) and Plymouth Superbird (1970).  Chrysler’s cars looked radical to achieve what they did but the modifications which created the Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II and Ford Torino Talladega were so subtle as to be barely noticeable, the most effective being the increased slope on the lengthened nose, the flush grill and some changes which had the effect of lowering both the centre of gravity and the body.  The Ford and Mercury might have been a less spectacular sight than the Dodge or Plymouth but on the tracks the seeming slight tweaks did the job and both were among the fastest and most successful of their brief era.

1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II (slab-sided but slippery, left), 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler (sleek but less aerodynamic than its predecessor, centre) and the aborted 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II (handicapped out of contention by NASCAR, right).   

In 1970, just how aerodynamic was the 1969 Cyclone Spoiler was proved when the racing teams tried the new model which, although it looked sleek, was not as aerodynamically efficient and noticeably slower.  That might seem something of an own goal but Ford were blindsided by NASCAR’s decision to render the low-volume “aero cars” uncompetitive by restricting them to the use of 305 cubic inch (5.0 litre) engines while the conventional bodies were permitted to use the full 430 (7.0).  Thus the aerodynamic modifications planned for the 1970 Torino and Cyclone never entered production.  Of the two prototype Cyclone Spoiler IIs built, one survives revealing a nose which was in its own way as radical as those earlier seen on the Plymouth and Dodge.  In the collector market, the aero cars are much sought but the Cyclones are the least valued which may seem strange because they were on the circuits among the most successful of the era.  Market analysts attribute this to (1) the Cyclone Spoiler II (and Torino Talladega) being visually much less eye-catching than the wild-looking pair from Chrysler and (2) the Cyclone Spoiler II being sold only with a modest 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) engine whereas the Fords ran 428s (7.0) and the Chryslers 440 (7.2) & 426 (6.9) units, the latter a version of the engine actually used in the race cars.

The highly qualified Kate Upton (b 1992) was in 2014 featured in a Sports Illustrated session filmed in a "vomit comet" (a modified Boeing 727 with a padded interior). 

Cammer

Cammer (pronounced kham-ah)

(1) A content-provider who uses a webcam to distribute imagery on some basis (applied especially to attractive young females associated with the early use of webcams).

(2) Slang for an engine produced in small numbers by Ford (US) in the mid-late 1960s.

(3) A general term for any camera operator (now less common because the use in the context of webcam feeds prevailed.

1964: A diminutive of single overhead cam(shaft).  Cam was from the sixteenth century Middle English cam, from the Dutch kam (cog of a wheel (originally, comb)) and was cognate with the English comb, the form preserved in modern Dutch compounds such as kamrad & kamwiel (cog wheel).  The association with webcams began in the mid-1990s, cam in that context a contraction of camera.  The Latin camera (chamber or bedchamber) was from the Ancient Greek καμάρα (kamára) (anything with an arched cover, a covered carriage or boat, a vaulted room or chamber, a vault) of uncertain origin; a doublet of chamber.  Dating from 1708, it was from the Latin that Italian gained camera and Spanish camara, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek kamára and the Old Church Slavonic komora, the Lithuanian kamara and the Old Irish camra all are borrowings from Latin.  Cammer was first used in 1964 as oral shorthand for Ford’s 427 SHOC (single overhead camshaft) V8 engine, the alternative slang form being the phonetic “sock” and it became so associated with the one item that “cammer” has never been applied to other overhead camshaft engines.  The first web-cam (although technically it pre-dated the web) feed dates from 1991 and the first to achieve critical mass (ie “went viral”) was from 1996.  Cammer is a noun; the noun plural is cammers. 

Lindsay Lohan on webcam in Get a Clue (2002) a Disney Channel original movie.

The word came be used for photographic devices as a clipping of the New Latin camera obscura (dark chamber) a black box with a lens that could project images of external objects), contrasted with the (circa 1750) camera lucida (light chamber), which used prisms to produce an image on paper beneath; it was used to generate an image of a distant object.  Camera was thus (circa 1840) adopted in nineteenth century photography because early cameras used a pinhole and a dark room.  The word was extended to filming devices from 1928. Camera-shy (not wishing to be photographed) dates from 1890, the first camera-man (one who operates a camera) recorded in 1908.  The first webcam feed (pre-dating the public availability of the worldwideweb (www) which permitted feeds to the wild), dates from 1991.  

jennicam.org (1996-2003)

xcoffee cam-feed of Trojan Room coffee pot, University of Cambridge, 1991-2001.

It wasn’t the internet’s first webcam feed, that seems to have been one in started in 1991 (before the worldwideweb was available to the public) aimed at a coffee machine in a fourth floor office at the University of Cambridge's Computer Science Department, created by scientists based in a lab the floor below so they would know whether to bother walking up a flight of stairs for a cup, but in 1996, nineteen year-old Jennifer Ringley (b 1976), from a webcam in her university dorm room, broadcast herself live to the whole world, 24/7.  With jennicam.org, she effectively invented "lifecasting" and while the early feed was of grainy, still, monochrome images (updated every fifteen seconds) which, considered from the twenty-first century, sounds not interesting and hardly viral, it was one of the first internet sensations, attracting a regular following of four-million which peaked at almost twice that.  According to internet lore, it more than once crashed the web, seven million being a high proportion of the web users at the time and the routing infrastructure then wasn't as robust as it would become.  Tellingly, Ms Ringley majored in economics which explains the enticingly suggestive title "jennicam" whereas the nerds at Cambridge could think of nothing more catchy than "xcoffee".  

Jenni and pussy.

Although there were more publicized moments, jennicam.org was mostly a slideshow of the mundane: Jennifer studying at her desk, doing the laundry or brushing her teeth but it hinted at the realisation of earlier predictions, Andy Warhol's (1928–1987) fifteen minutes of fame and Marshall McLuhan's (1911-1980) global village.  While not exactly pre-dating reality television, jennicam.org was years before the genre became popular and was closer to real than the packaged products became.

The 1964 Ford 427 SOHC (the Cammer)

1964 426 HEMI in Plymouth race-car.

There was cheating aplenty in 1960s NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) racing but little so blatant as Chrysler in 1964 fielding their 426 HEMI, a pure racing engine, in what was supposed to be a series for mass-produced vehicles.  Whatever the legal position, it was hardly in the spirit of gentlemanly competition though in fairness to Chrysler, they didn't start it, NASCAR for years something of a parallel universe.  In 1957, the Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) had announced a ban on auto-racing and the public positions of General Motors (GM), Ford and Chrysler supported the stand, leaving the sport to dealer and privateers although, factory support of these operations was hardly a secret.  NASCAR liked things this way believing the popularity of their “stock cars” relied on the vehicles raced being close to (ie "in stock") what was available for purchase by the general public.  Additionally, they wished to maintain the sport as affordable even for low budget teams and the easy way to do this was restricting the hardware to mass-produced, freely available parts, thereby leveling the playing field.  The façade was maintained until the summer of 1962 when Ford announced it was going to "go racing".  Market research had identified the competitive advantage to be gained from motorsport in an era when, uniquely, the demographic bulge of the baby-boomers, unprecedented prosperity and cheap gas (petrol) would coalesce, Ford understanding that in the decade ahead, a historically huge catchment of 17-25 year old males with high disposable incomes were there to be sold stuff and they’d likely be attracted to fast cars.  Thus began Ford's "Total Performance" era which would see successful participation in just about everything from rally tracks to Formula One, including four memorable victories at the Le Mans twenty-four hour classic.

1963 Chevrolet 427 "Mystery Motor".

The market leader, the more conservative GM, said they would "continue to abide by the spirit of the AMA ban" and, despite the scepticism of some, it seems they meant it because their racing development was halted though not without a parting shot, Chevrolet in 1963 providing their preferred team a 427 cubic inch (7 litre) engine that came to be known as the "mystery motor".  It stunned all with its pace but, being prematurely delivered, lacked reliability and, after a few races, having proved something, GM departed, saving NASCAR the bother of the inevitable squabble over eligibility.

1961 Ford Galaxie Starliner (left) & 1962 Galaxie with “distinguished hardtop styling” (aka “boxtop”, right).

Ford stayed and cheated, though not yet with engines.  The aerodynamic qualities the 1960-1961 Galaxie Starliner possessed by virtue of its gently sloping rear roof-line generated both speed and stability on the NASCAR ovals; that made it a successful race-car but in the showrooms, after some early enthusiasm, sales dropped so it was replaced in 1962 with an implementation of the “formal” style which had been so well-received when used on the Thunderbird.  As the marketing department predicted (or, more correctly, worked out from the results of their focus-group sessions), what they called “distinguished hardtop styling” proved more commercially palatable but while customers may have been seduced, the physics of fluid dynamics didn’t change and the “buffeting” induced at speeds above 140 mph (225 km/h) limited performance, adversely affected straight-line stability (especially when in close proximity to other cars) and increased fuel consumption.  What the distinguished hardtop styling had done was make the Galaxie less competitive on the circuits, the loss of up to 3 mph (5 km/h) in top speed the difference being winning and losing; Ford’s NASCAR teams dubbed the look the “boxtop”, boxes not noted for their fine aerodynamic properties and years later, Chrysler too would discover just how significant at high speed is the slope of the rear glass.

Beware of imitations: Images from Ford's 1962 Galaxie Starlift "brochure" which didn't fool NASCAR.  

Quickly to regain the lost aerodynamic advantage, Ford fabricated a handful of detachable fibreglass hard-tops which could be “bolted on”, essentially transforming a Galaxie convertible back into something as slippery (and even a little lighter) as the previous Starliner.  Having no intention of incurring the expense of designing and engineering them to an acceptable consumer standard (which they knew few anyway would buy) Ford simply gave the hand-made plastic roof the name “Starlift”, allocated a part-number and even mocked-up a brochure for NASCAR to read.  Although on paper it appeared a FADC (factory-authorized dealer accessory) like any other (floor-mats, mud flaps et al), an inspection of the device revealed it was obviously phoney, the rear passenger glass on each side not fitting the sloping C-pillar, demanding the use of a pair of tacked-on plastic fillers to close the gap and it was obvious the thing wasn’t close to being waterproof.  NASCAR outlawed the scam.  However, because five Starlift-equipped Galaxie convertibles had qualified for a postponed event at Atlanta before the ban, they were permitted to run in the re-scheduled event and on the only occasion it was raced in NASCAR competition it won, the 100% win-record ranking it among the sport’s most successful models.

The 483 cid Galaxie Starlift at speed, Bonneville, October 1962. 

Banned from the circuits though it was, Ford did manage to give the Starlift one final fling.  In October 1962, one fitted with an “experimental” version of the FE V8 with a displacement of 483 cubic inches (7.9 litres) was taken to Bonneville where it was used to set a slew of international speed records, clocked at 182.19 mph (293.21 km/h) and averaging 163.91 mph (263.79 km/h) over 500 miles (804.67 km).  Noting the big numbers, NASCAR took the opportunity to impose a 7 litre (usually expressed as 427 cid) displacement limit, one rule that was easy to enforce.

Galaxies with "sports hardtop" roofline, Firecracker 400, Daytona International Speedway, July, 1963.

Hobbled by the distinguished hardtop styling, Ford managed to win only another four races in a season dominated by Pontiac but the engineers solved the problem in early 1963 with the “sports hardtop” roofline which pleased both the pubic buying cars and the teams racing them.  Remarkably, the revision to the roofline, in conjunction with increasing engine displacement from 406 cubic inches (6.6 litres) to 427 (strictly speaking it was 426 (7.0)) created one of the era’s more improbably successful race cars which enjoyed great success in saloon car events in England, Europe, South Africa, Australia & New Zealand until the lighter and more nimble Mustang became available.

1964 427 SOHC (Cammer).  Note the famously long timing chain.

Ford, which while enjoying great success in 1963 had actually adhered to the engine rules, responded to Chrysler’s 426 HEMI (which had dominated the 1964 season) within a remarkable ninety days with a derivation of their 427 FE which replaced the pushrod activated valves with two single overhead camshafts (SOHC), permitting higher engine speeds and more efficient combustion, thereby gaining perhaps a hundred horsepower.  The engine, officially called the 427 SOHC, was nicknamed the Cammer (although some, noting the acronym, called it the "sock").  The problem for NASCAR was that neither the 426 HEMI nor the 427 Cammer was in a car which could be bought from a showroom.

1964 Chrysler 426 HEMI DOHC prototype.

Not best pleased, NASCAR was mulling over things when Chrysler responded to the 427 Cammer by demonstrating a mock-up of their 426 HEMI with a pair of heads using double overhead camshafts (DOHC) and four valves per cylinder instead of the usual two.  Fearing an escalating war of technology taking their series in an undesired direction, in October 1964, NASCAR cracked down and issued new rules for the 1965 season.  Although retaining the 427 cubic inch limit, engines now had to be mass-production units available for general sale and thus no hemi heads or overhead camshafts would be allowed  The rule change had been provoked also by an increasing death toll as speeds rose beyond what was safe for both tyres and on circuits.

1965 Ford 427 FE.

That meant Ford’s 427 FE was eligible but Chrysler’s 426 HEMI was not and a disgruntled Chrysler withdrew from NASCAR, shifting their efforts to drag-racing where the rules of the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) were more accommodating (while it's not clear if Chrysler complied even with those, the NHRA welcomed them anyway).  In 1965, Chrysler seemed happy with the 426 HEMI's impact over the quarter-mile and Ford seemed happy being able to win just about every NASCAR race.  Not happy was NASCAR which was watching crowds and revenue drop as the audience proved less interested in a sport where results had become predictable, their hope the rule changes would entice GM back to motor-sport not realised.  NASCAR audiences were a tribal lot and to attract the "Ford people", "GM people" and "Chrysler people", competitive cars from each needed to be fielded.

1966 Chrysler 426 Street HEMI.

It was 1967 before everybody was, (more or less) happy again.  Chrysler, which claimed it had intended always to make the 426 HEMI available to the general public and that the 1964 race programme had been just part of engineering development, for 1966 introduced the 426 Street HEMI, a detuned version of the race engine, a general-production option for just about any car in which it would fit (almost the 11,000-odd made between 1966-1971 went into two door coupés but there were also some 200 convertibles and in the first year of availability a a reputed five were installed in Dodge Coronet four-door sedans (the industry legend being two were special orders for the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) although Chrysler did decline one request for a Street HEMI station wagon).  NASCAR responded quickly, announcing the HEMI now complied with the rules and was welcome, with a few restrictions, to compete.  Ford assumed NASCAR needed them more than they needed NASCAR and announced they would be using the 427 Cammer in 1966.  NASCAR was now trapped by its own precedents, conceding only that Ford could follow Chrysler’s earlier path, saying the 427 Cammer would be regarded “…as an experimental engine in 1966… (to) …be reviewed for eligibility in 1967."   In other words, eligibility depended still on mass-production (ie "mass" as defined by NASCAR's minimum annual production threshold of 500 and "production" meaning available to the general public in showrooms).

427 SOHC installed in a replica (by ERA) of a 1966 Shelby American AC Cobra 427 S/C (Semi-Competition).

Ford, although unable easily to create a 427 Street Cammer, recalled the Starlift trick and announced the SOHC was now available as a production item.  That was, at best, economical with the truth, given not only could nobody walk into a showroom and buy a car with a 427 Cammer under the hood but it seemed at the time not always possible to purchase one even in a crate.  Realising the futility of kicking the can down the road, NASCAR decided to kick it to the umpire, hoping all sides would abide by the decision, referring the matter to the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the FIA; the International Automobile Federation), the world governing body for motor-sport, at that point not yet the byword for dopiness it would become.  Past-masters at compromise, the FIA approved the 427 Cammer but imposed a weight handicap on any car in which it was used.

Cutaway Ford FE V8s: the 427 (left) and 427 SOHC (right).

Ford called that not just unfair but also unsafe, citing concerns at the additional stress the heavier vehicles would place of suspension and tyres, adding their cars couldn’t “… be competitive under these new rules."  Accordingly, Ford threatened to withdraw from NASCAR in 1966 but found the public’s sympathy was with Chrysler which had done the right thing and made their engine available to the public.  Ford sulked for a while but returned to the fray in late 1966, the math of NASCAR’s new rules having choked the HEMI a little so the 427 FE remained competitive, resulting in the curious anomaly of the 426 Street HEMI running dual four-barrel induction while on the circuits only a single carburetor was permitted.  Mollified, Ford returned in force for 1967 and the arrangement, which ushered in one of the classic eras of motorsport, proved durable, the 427 FE used until 1969 and the 426 HEMI until the big block engines were finally banned after the 1974 season, three years after the last 426 Street HEMI was sold.

Ford 427 Cammer in 1967 Fairlane.

While the 426 HEMI DOHC never ran (the display unit's valve train was electrically activated), the 427 Cammer was produced for sale in crates and although the number made remains uncertain, most sources suggest it was probably as high as several-hundred and it enjoyed decades of success in various forms of racing including off-shore power boats.  Whether it would ever have been reliable in production cars is questionable.  Such was Ford’s haste to produce the thing there wasn’t time to develop a proper gear drive system for the various shafts so it ended up with a timing-chain over six feet (1.8m) long.  For competition use, where engines are re-built with some frequency, that proved satisfactory but road cars are expected to run for thousands of miles between services and there was concern the tendency of chains to stretch would impair reliability and tellingly, Ford never considered the 427 Cammer for a production car, a breed which, unlike racing engines, attract warranties.  Even some sixty years on there’s still a mystique surrounding the cammer and if one can’t find an original for sale (one sold at auction in 2021 for US$60,000), from a variety of manufacturers it’s possible still to buy all the bits and pieces needed to build one (in a quirk of timing and the overlap of simultaneous product development, some of the very early SOHCs used the top oiler block although most were side oilers and the third party reproductions over the years have always been the latter).  Although the production numbers have never been verified (which seems strange given Ford's accounting system recorded everything which emerged with a serial number), what all agree is the horsepower of a stock SOHC was somewhere over 600, the number bouncing around a bit because there were versions with single and dual four barrel carburetors, different camshaft profiles and variations in the cylinder heads and while it never made it into a production car, it remains the ultimate FE.