Shaker

Shaker (pronounced shey-ker)

(1) A person or thing that shakes or the means by which something is shaken.

(2) A container with a perforated top from which a seasoning, condiment, sugar, flour, or the like is shaken onto food.

(3) Any of various containers for shaking beverages to mix the ingredients (eg cocktail shaker).

(4) A dredger or caster.

(5) A member of the Millennial Church, originating in England in the middle of the eighteenth century (initial capital letter).

(6) Noting or pertaining to a style of something produced by Shakers and characterized by simplicity of form, lack of ornamentation, fine craftsmanship, and functionality (initial capital letter).

(7) As the later component in mover and shaker, one who is important, influential or a dynamic forced in some field or generally.

(8) An exposed air-intake system for internal combustion engines, attached directly to the induction and thus intended to shake as the engine vibrates.

(9) A variety of pigeon.

(10) In railway line construction, one who holds spikes while they are hammered.

(11) In music, a musical percussion instrument filled with granular solids which produce a rhythmic sound when shaken.

(12) A kind of straight-sided, stackable glass.

1400-1450: From the late Middle English, the construct being shake +‎ -er.  Shake is from the Middle English schaken, from the Old English sċeacan & sċacan (to shake), from the Proto-West Germanic skakan, from the Proto-Germanic skakaną (to shake, swing, escape), from the primitive Indo-European (s)keg- & (s)kek- (to jump, move).  It was cognate with the Scots schake & schack (to shake), the West Frisian schaekje (to shake), the Dutch schaken (to elope, make clean, shake), the Low German schaken (to move, shift, push, shake) & schacken (to shake, shock), the Norwegian Nynorsk skaka (to shake), the Swedish skaka (to shake), the Dutch schokken (to shake, shock) and the Russian скака́ть (skakát) (to jump).  The –er suffix is from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought usually to have been borrowed from Latin –ārius and reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (The Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  Added to verbs (typically a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb) and forms an agent noun.  The plural is shakers.

The Shakers

The Millennial Church later called the Shakers, dates from 1747, the name shaker first casually applied circa 1750 although it had been used to describe similar practices in other sects since the 1640s and, as an adjective, shaker was first applied to their stark furniture in 1866.  The first cocktail shaker was mentioned in 1868 (the ancient Greeks had seison (a kind of vase) which translated literally as “shaker".  The modern-sounding “movers and shakers” is attested as early as 1874.  The Shakers began as a sect of the English Quakers, the movement founded in 1747 by Jane and James Wardley.  Correctly styled as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, the Shakers were a celibate, millenarian group that established a number of communal settlements in the United States during the eighteenth century.  The early movement was based on the revelations of Ann Lee (1736–1784; addressed within as Mother Ann Lee) who had been active in the English church for almost twenty years after becoming a devotee of the preaching of the Wardleys to whom she confessed her sins; central to her vision was the necessity of repentance and the forsaking of sin as the pathway to redemption.

Movers and shakers: Shakers shaking in worship, New York, 1858.

Promising a vision of a heavenly kingdom to come, Shaker teaching emphasized simplicity, celibacy, & work and communities were flourishing by the mid-nineteenth century, contributing to American culture the style of architecture, furniture, and handicraft for which the movement is today best remembered.  The distinctive feature of their form of worship was the ecstatic dancing or "shaking", which led to them being dubbed “the Shaking Quakers”, later generally shorted to “Shakers”.  The physicality of their practices was neither novel or unique, nor anything particularly associated with Christianity, many religions or sects within, noted for rituals involving shaking, shouting, dancing, whirling, and singing, sometimes in intelligible words, often called “in tongues” (the idea often being what was spoken coming directly from God).

The much-admired Shaker furniture.

Austere though they may have appeared, the Shakers were genuinely innovative in agriculture and industry, their farms prosperous and their ingenuity produced a large number of (usually unpatented) inventions including, the screw propeller, babbitt metal, a rotary harrow, an automatic spring, a turbine waterwheel, a threshing machine and the circular saw.  In agri-business, they were the first in the world to package and market seeds and were once the US’s largest producers of medicinal herbs.  Shaker dance and music is now regarded as a fork in American folk art as well as its religious tradition and the simplicity, functionality and fine craftsmanship of their architecture, furniture and artefacts have had a lasting influence on design.

Although intellectually primitive, Mother Ann’s theology was elaborate but with celibacy as the cardinal principle, the continuity of the communities depended on a constant flow of converts rather than the organic regeneration planned by other sects but the numbers attracted were never sufficient to maintain a critical mass and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the movement went into decline.  From its height in the 1840s, when some six-thousand members were active, by 1905 there were barely a thousand, compelling the shakers to resort to advertising for members, emphasizing physical comfort of the lifestyle as well as spiritual values.  It became and increasing hard sell in an era of increasing urbanisation and materialism and the convulsion of the twentieth century did little to arrest the trend.  In 1957, the leaders met and voted to close the Shaker Covenant, the document which all new members need to sign to become members.  Membership was thus closed forever and by the turn of the century, there was but one working Shaker village in Sabbathday Lake, Maine; it had fewer than ten members and, in 2023, there appear to be only one or two left alive.

The concept of the cocktail shaker is ancient and ceramic versions dating back some 10,000 years have been found in the Middle East and South & Central America.  The use to which they were put seems in all places to have been essentially the same: a means of mixing fermented fluids with herbs and spices added for flavor, after which a gauze-like fabric could be stretched over the opening so the unwanted residue could be strained off.  Innkeepers for centuries doubtlessly improvised (presumably using two suitably shaped & sized glasses or goblets) their own shakers but it was in cities of the north-east US (New York & Boston factions both claiming the credit) during the early nineteenth century the first commercially produced units were advertised.  By mid-century they were widely used, their functionality and convenience cited by some as one of the reasons there was in the era such an upsurge in the number of recipes publish for mixed drinks.  One of the earliest innovations was the integration of a strainer mechanism although bartenders apparently preferred the detachable devices (said to be much better when working with crushed or shaved ice) and the volume of patent applications for variations on the design of strainers hints at their popularity.  Now, most cocktail shakers are either two-piece (sold with and without a fitted shaker) or (and aimed at the home market) three-piece with a built in shaker, the additional component being a fitted cap which can be used as a measure for spirits or other ingredients.

The shaker and the induction system

1969 Ford Mustang 428 CobraJet.

Shakers were air intakes bolted directly to the induction path of an internal combustion engine’s carburetor(s), the advantage being a measurable increase in power using cool, dense air rather than the inherently warmer under-bonnet air.  Cold-air induction systems weren’t uncommon in the 1960s and 1970s but the shaker’s novelty was that being attached to the engine and protruding through a hole in the hood (bonnet), the things shook as the engine vibrated on its mounts.  Men are still excited by such things.

1971 Plymouth Hemi Cuda.

Early advertising material from Chrysler referred to the device as the Incredible Quivering Exposed Cold Air Grabber but buyers called must have thought that a bit much and they’ve only ever been referred to as shakers.  Sometimes less is more.  Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) suggested a good title for his book might be Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice but his publisher thought that a bit ponderous and preferred the punchier My Struggle (Mein Kampf).  Unfortunately, the revised title was the best thing about it, the style and contents truly ghastly and it's long and repetitious, the ideas within able easily to be reduced to a few dozen pages (some suggest fewer but the historical examples cited for context do require some space.

1974 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am SD-455.

The reverse facing shakers (and air intakes generally) were designed, like cowl-induction, to take advantage of the properties of fluid dynamics which, at speed, produced an accumulation of cold, high-pressure air in the space at the bottom of the windscreen.  Their use created an urban myth that Holly certain makes of carburetor (the Holly and the Rochester among those mentioned) didn't like being "force-fed" which (if done badly) was sort of true but nothing to do with the low-pressure bonnet-mounted devices.  Engineers had long understood the principle and cowl-induction systems were first seen on racing cars in 1910.

1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS454 (LS6).

A genuine problem with the external induction systems was rain.  In torrential rain, including when the car was parked, moisture entry could cause problems.  Some manufacturers included a flap, providing a protective seal.  The early ones were manually activated but later versions were vacuum-controlled, the extent of opening cognizant of the pressure being applied to the throttle so it opened and closed and engine speed rose and fell.  As a means of getting cold air, this was of course thought most cool.

1964 Ford Fairlane 427 Thunderbolt.

Actually, the bonnet mounted intakes, regardless of which way they faced, weren’t the optimal way to deliver cold air to the induction system but they were the most–admired and something for which buyers were prepared to pay extra so, although they were the most expensive system to produce, they were also the most profitable. Simple ducting from within the wheel-wells delivered most of the benefits but the most efficient harvest of high-pressure air which gained also a “ram-air” effect which, helpfully, increased as speeds rose, was to duct from a forward-facing inlet in the front bumper bar or grill.  Enjoying a much higher pressure than the area around the cowl, with well-designed ducting, a ram-air tube can operate at up to 125% the efficiency of a cowl intake, able to generate a pressure of 2-3 psi (14-20 pascals) at high speed.  Ford in 1936 & 1964 found that by happy coincidence, the inside set of headlights on their Galaxies and Fairlanes were positioned to suit such ducting almost as if they'd been placed there by design so on the limited production "Lightweight" Galaxie and the Fairlane "Thunderbolt", the lens were removed and the apertures re-purposed.  Only 100 of the Thunderbolts were produced, all intended for use in drag racing and this machine secured the 1964 NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) championship in the Super Stock class.

Martini

Martini (pronounced mahr-tee-nee)

A cocktail made with gin or vodka and dry vermouth, usually served with a green olive (the twist of lemon a more recent alternative).

1885-1890:  Origin disputed; it may be an alteration of Martinez (an earlier alternate name of the drink) but is probably by association with the vermouth manufacturer Martini, Sola & Co. (later Martini & Rossi). Another theory holds it’s a corruption of Martinez, California, town where the drink was said to have originated.  Others claim it was first mixed in New York but then NYC claims lots of things happened there first.

CCTV image capture, New York City, 24 July 2012.  Noted Martini aficionado Lindsay Lohan enjoys a Vodka Martini.

By 1922 the Martini had assumed its modern, recognizable form: London dry gin and dry vermouth in a ratio 2:1, stirred in a mixing glass with ice cubes, sometimes with addition aromatic bitters, then strained into a chilled cocktail glass.  Green olives were the expected garnish by the onset of World War II with a twist of lemon peel often seen by the 1950s.  From the 1930s on, the amount of vermouth steadily dropped as the cult of the dry prevailed.  Today, a typical dry Martini is made with a ration between 6:1 and 12:1.  Some were more extreme, Noël Coward (1899–1973) suggesting filling a glass with gin, then lifting it in the general direction of the vermouth factories in Italy.  Ian Fleming (1908–1964) had James Bond follow Harry Craddock’s shaken, not stirred directive from The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) but contemporaries, Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) and Franklin Roosevelt (1882–1945; US president 1933-1945), neither a stranger to a Martini, both recommended stirring although chemists observe the concept of “bruising the gin” has no basis in science.  The Vodka Martini came later.  It was first noted in the 1950s when known as the Kangaroo Cocktail, a hint at its disreputable origins but normally reliable sources commend the Blueberry Vodka Martini and purists concede this is the only Martini to benefit from using sweet vermouth.  In 1966, the American Standards Association (ASA) released K100.1-1966, "Safety Code and Requirements for Dry Martinis," a humorous account of how to make a "standard" dry Martini. The latest revision of this document, K100.1-1974, was published by American National Standards Institute (ANSI).  Flippant they may have been but they’re good guides to the classic method.

Compare & contrast: A classic Gin Martini (left) and a Stoli Blueberry Vodka Martini (right)

Stoli Blueberry Vodka Martini Recipe

Ingredients

60 ml (2 oz) Stoli Blueberi Vodka
60 ml (2 oz) sweet vermouth
15 ml (½ oz) lemon Juice
3-5 fresh blueberries
Ice Cubes

Instructions

(1) Pour Stioli Blueberi Vodka, sweet vermouth and lemon juice into cocktail shaker and middle blueberries.
(2) Add ice cubes until shaker is two-thirds full.
(3) Shake thoroughly until mixture is icy.
(4) Strain and pour into chilled martini glasses.
(5) Skew blueberries with cocktail pick, garnish martini and serve.
(6) Add a little blueberry juice to lend a bluish tincture (optinal).

Martini Racing, the Porsche 917 and the Pink Pig

Porsche 917LH, Le Mans, 1970.

Unlike some teams which maintained a standard livery, Martini Racing sometimes fielded other designs.  One noted departure was the “hippie” or “psychedelic” color scheme applied to the Porsche 917LH (Langheck (Longtail)) which placed second at Le Mans in 1970 and proved so popular that the factory received requests from race organizers requesting it be entered.  Weeks later, across the Atlantic, the organizers of the Watkins Glen Six Hours wanted their own ‘hippie’ 917 but with the car in Stuttgart, Martini Racing took over another team’s car and raced in ‘hippie’ colors to ninth place on one day and sixth the next.

Porsche 917K, 1970.

Subsequently the scheme was reprised in another, even more lurid combination of yellow & red in another psychedelic design, this time to match the corporate colors of Shell, the teams sponsor.  This remains the only surviving psychedelic car, the factory’s Langheck 917 being converted to 1971 specifications and painted in Gulf Oil’s livery for Le Mans.  Like many other used 917s, subsequently it was scrapped by an unsentimental Porsche management.

Porsche 917-20, 1971.

Although it raced only once, the “Pink Pig” (917-20) remains one of the best remembered 917s.  In the never-ending quest to find the optimal compromise between the down-force needed to adhere to the road and a low-drag profile to increase speed, a collaboration between Porsche and France's Société d’Etudes et de Réalisations Automobiles (SERA, the Society for the Study of Automotive Achievement) was formed to explore a design combine the slipperiness of the 917-LH with the stability of the 917-K.  Porsche actually had their internal styling staff work on the concept at the same time, the project being something of a Franco-German contest.  The German work produced something streamlined & futuristic with fully enclosed wheels and a split rear wing but despite the promise, the French design was preferred.  The reasons for this have never been clarified but there may have been concerns the in-house effort was too radical a departure from what had been homologated on the basis of an earlier inspection and that getting such a different shape through scrutineering, claiming it still an “evolution” of the original 917, might have been a stretch.  No such problems confronted the French design; SERA's Monsieur Charles Deutsch (1911-1980) was Le Mans race director.  On the day, the SERA 917 passed inspection without comment.

Porsche 917-20, Le Mans, 1971.

At 87 versus 78 inches (2.2 vs 2.0 m), the SERA car much wider than a standard 917K, the additional width shaped to minimize air flow disruption across the wheel openings.  The nose was shorter, as was the tail which used a deeper concave than the “fin” tail the factory had added in 1971.  Whatever the aerodynamic gains, compared to the lean, purposeful 917-K, it looked fat, stubby and vaguely porcine; back in Stuttgart, the Germans, never happy about losing to the French, dubbed it "the pig".  Initially unconvincing in testing, the design responded to a few tweaks, the factory content to enter it in a three hour event where it dominated until sidelined by electrical gremlins.  Returned to the wind tunnel, the results were inconclusive although suggesting it wasn't significantly different from a 917K and suffered from a higher drag than the 917-LH.  It was an indication of what the engineers had long suspected: the 917K's shape was about ideal.

Porsche 917-20, Le Mans, 1971.

For the 1971 Le Mans race, the artist responsible for the psychedelia of 1970 applied the butcher’s chart lines to the body which had been painted pink.  In the practice and qualifying sessions, the Pig ran in pink with the dotted lines but not yet the decals naming the cuts; those, in a font called Pretoria, being applied just before the race and atop each front fender was a white pig-shaped decal announcing: Trüfel Jäger von Zuffenhausen (the truffel hunter from Zuffenhausen); the Pink Pig had arrived.  Corpulent or not, in practice, it qualified a creditable seventh, two seconds slower than the 917-K that ultimately won and, in the race, ran well, running as high as third but a crash ended things.  Still in the butcher's shop livery, it's now on display in the Porsche museum.

Porsche 917-20, 1971.

Scuttlebutt has always surrounded the Pink Pig.  It's said the decals with the names of the cuts of pork and bacon were applied furtively, in the early morning of the race, just to avoid anyone asking they be removed.  Unlike the two other factory Porsches entered under the Martini banner, the Pink Pig carried no Martini decals, the rumor being that the Martini board refused to associate the brand with the thing.  Finally, although never confirmed by anyone, it's long been assumed the livery was created, not with any sense of levity but as a spiteful swipe at SERA although it may have been something light-hearted, nobody ever having proved Germans have no sense of humor.

Porsche 917KH, 1971.

Using the 917KH (Kurz (Short)), the factory team in 1970 gained Porsche its first outright victory in the Le Mans twenty-four classic.  In the following year's race, Martini Racing won using a 917KH with a similar specification, running this time in the standard corporate livery.  The refinements to the 917K's aerodynamic properties had tamed whatever idiosyncrasies remained from the fast but unstable original and with still could have been extracted from the enlarged flat-12 but with the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (International Automobile Federation)), international sport’s dopiest regulatory body, again changing the rules, the run in 1971 would prove to be the 917’s last official appearance at Le Mans.

Porsche 917-10, 1972.

Although the bloodless bureaucrats at the FIA probably thought they'd killed off the 917, there was still much potential to be exploited and Porsche now devoted the programme to the Can-AM (Canadian-American Challenge Cup), conducted on North American circuits for unlimited displacement sports cars.  Run under Group 7 regulations, what few rules there were mostly easy simultaneously to conform with while ignoring which it why the Can-Am between 1966-1973 is remembered as one of the golden eras of the sport.  Now turbocharged (as 917-10 & 917-30), in their ultimate form the cars were tuned in qualifying trim for some 1500 horsepower and raced usually with over 1000.  So dominant were the 917s that the previously successful McLaren team withdrew to focus on Formula One and there were doubts about the future of the series but as it turned out, the interplay of geopolitics and economics that was the first oil crisis meant excesses such as unlimited displacement racing was soon sacrificed.

Porsche 917K-81 (Kremer).

However, the 917 was allowed one final fling as an unintended consequence of rule changes for the 1981 sports car season which although never intended as a loophole through which the now ancient Porsche could pass, for one team the chance to again run the 917 at Le Mans proved irresistible.  The factory had retired the 917 after its win in the 1973 Can-Am, moving to the 936 platform for 1975 and while aware of the implications of the rule changes, weren't tempted by what they regarded a nostalgic cul-de-sac but Kremer Racing were intrigued and, with factory support, built a new 917 to Group 6 specifications (enclosed bodywork and a 5.0 litre flat-12), labeling it the 917K-81.  Using Kremer own aluminium spaceframe, at the 1981 Le Mans 24 hour it was fast enough to qualify in the top ten and run with the leaders until a suspension failure forced retirement (the car eventually classified: 38th, DNF (did not finish).  The pace displayed was sufficiently encouraging for the car to be entered in that year's 1000 km event at Brand Hatch where it proved fast but, lacking the factory support, also fragile and it again recorded a DNF.  That was the end of the line for the 917.

Cellar

Cellar (pronounced sel-er)

(1) A room or set of rooms, for the storage of food, fuel etc, wholly or partly underground and usually beneath a building.

(2) As “wine cellar”, an underground room in wine is stored (now often built above ground but still referred to as “wine cellar”); as “cellar”, a stock of bottled wines.

(3) As “cellar dweller(s)”, in the slang of competitive sport, a reference to teams in the lowliest reaches of the points ladder.

(4) As a verb, to store something (usually wine) in a cellar.

(5) As “salt cellar”, (1) a historical term for a small dish used for holding salt to be dispensed by a spoon & (2) an alternative (if historically misleading) term for what tends in modern use (initially especially in North America but later more generally) to be called a “salt shaker”.

1175–1225: From the Middle English celer and the Old French celier (“salt box” which survives in Modern French as cellier) from the Anglo-French & Latin cellārium (pantry; storeroom (literally group of cells”)), the construct being cell(a) + -ārium, the later re-spelling adopted to reflect the Latin form.  The fifteenth century English saler is from the Old French salier (salière in Modern French), from the Latin salarius (relating to salt) from the Latin sal (salt).  The Latin salarium was a noun use of the adjective meaning "pertaining to salt," again derived from the Latin sal (salt) from the primitive Indo-European sal- (salt).  The sense "room under a house or other building, mostly underground and used for storage" gradually emerged in late Middle and early Modern English, cellar-door attested by 1640s.  The somewhat clumsy noun cellarer (the person, usually in a monastery, responsible for providing food and drink) appears to have gone extinct by the late eighteenth century.

Of cellars, jugs, pots, mills & all that

Lindsay Lohan with milk jug, preparing a Pilk.  A Pilk is a mix of Pepsi Cola and milk, one of a class of beverages created by the Pepsi Corporation called Dirty Sodas which includes the Naughty & Ice, the Chocolate Extreme, the Cherry on Top, the Snow Fl(oat) and the Nutty Cracker.  All are intended to be served with cookies (biscuits).

In English, to describe the containers in which small quantities of stuff (as opposed to bulk-storage such as a bin) was stored, a variety of terms evolved.  Ground pepper is stored in a pepper pot which is shaken; whole or cracked peppercorns being stored in a pepper mill (often now called a pepper grinder) which is ground.  Ground salt is stored in a salt cellar and should be dispensed with a spoon whereas if shaken from a container it's best called a salt shaker; salt crystals are stored in a salt mill (often now called a salt grinder) which is ground.  Sometimes, the pepper pot and salt cellar are kept in a receptacle called a condiment caddy.  Ink, if used by directly dipping in a nib or quill end, is kept in an inkwell; if bought from a shop, it is sold in an ink pot, the latter more recent and, with the decline of writing with ink, now more prevalent.  Gravy is served in a gravy boat.  A ramekin is a small bowl used for preparing and serving individual portions of a variety of dishes, including crème brûlée, soup, molten cakes, moin moin, cheese or egg dishes, poi, macaroni and cheese, lasagna, potted shrimps, ice cream, soufflé, baked cocottes, crumbles, chakra póngal, or scallops, or used to serve side garnishes and condiments alongside an entrée.  Biscuits are kept in a biscuit barrel.  Tea is kept in a tea caddy, milk is served from a milk jug and sugar is taken from a sugar bowl with tongs if in lumps and if in crystals, is taken with a spoon or sprinkled from a caster or, more rarely, a sifter. Liquid condiments such as olive oil and balsamic vinegar are served from a cruet.  Soups and stews are served in a tureen and dispensed with a ladle.

The word ladle is the subject of one of the more curious definitional disputes in English.  A ladle is thought by most reasonable folk to be a specialized spoon but there are pedants of gastronomy who insist that while ladles have a spoon-shaped bowl, the angle of the handle (which can be so acute as to be perpendicular to the bowl) means they are so different to every other spoon that they can be used only for ladling, not spooning.  The etymological evidence offered is that the Middle English ladel is from the Old English hlædel, derived from the Proto-Germanic hlaþaną (to load), derived from several primitive Indo-European sources which meant “to put”, “lay out”, to spread” and, the Old English hlædel (a glossing of the Latin antlia (pump for drawing water)) is from hladan (to load; to draw up water).  It’s less a technical point than a social class signifier known probably only to etymologist and the more snobby maîtres d'hôtel.

Saliera (salt cellar) circa 1542 by Benvenuto Cellini, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien.

In addition to the works he completed, Italian sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) is remembered for his vividly written autobiography, a few of the more extravagant tales suggesting some unreliability of memory but the four murders to which he confesses are undisputed and well-documented.  Convinced of his own greatness, which he did not seek to conceal from his readers, his virtues and vices he seems to suggest were the essential qualities of his genius and for an abundance of one he should be forgiven the excesses of the other.  Friends in high places seemed to agree.  Thanks repeatedly to the interventions of well-placed men of influence, including many cardinals and more than one pope, he was able either to escape punishment or secure pardons and early release from the imprisonment imposed for many of his crimes which, as well as the murders, included sodomy of both young men and women, one of whom in Paris filed a complaint accusing him of using her "after the Italian fashion".

A mannerist masterpiece, the memorable Saliera (salt cellar) is some 10" (250 mm) high and 13" (330 mm) wide, sculpted by hand from rolled gold, resting on a base of ebony into which are installed ivory bearings to permit it to be rolled between guests, around the table.  It represents the gods of the earth and sea, their legs intertwined and thought to suggest “those lengthier branches of the sea which run up into the continents”.  A small boat in which to store the salt floats next to the sea god while a temple for peppercorns sits next to the earth goddess, the figures on the base noting the winds and times of day.  When Cellini presented the piece he made no mention of the names of the figures and only later would they be identified as Neptune and Tellus.

Scoop

Scoop (pronounced skoop)

(1) A ladle or ladle-like utensil, especially a small, deep-sided shovel with a short, horizontal handle, for taking up flour, sugar etc.

(2) A utensil composed of a palm-sized hollow hemisphere attached to a horizontal handle, for dishing out ice cream or other soft foods.

(3) A hemispherical portion of food as dished out by such a utensil.

(4) The bucket of a dredge, steam shovel etc.

(5) In medicine, a spoon-like surgical apparatus for removing substances or foreign objects from the body; a special spinal board used by emergency department staff that divides laterally (ie literally “scooping up” patients).

(6) A hollow or hollowed-out place.

(7) The act of ladling, dipping, dredging etc.

(8) The quantity held in a ladle, dipper, shovel, bucket etc.

(9) In journalism, a news item, report, or story revealed in one paper, magazine, newscast etc before any other outlet; in informal use, news, information, or details, especially as obtained from experience or an immediate source.

(10) A gathering to oneself, indicated usually by a sweeping motions of the hands or arms.

(11) In informal use, a big haul of something.

(12) In television & film production, a single-lens large floodlight shaped like a flour scoop and fitted with a reflector.

(13) To win a prize, award, or large amount of money.

(14) In bat & ball sports, to hit the ball on its underside so that it rises into the air.

(15) In hydrological management, a part of a drain used to direct flow.

(16) In air-induction management (to the engines in cars, boats, aircraft etc), a device which captures external the air-flow and directs it for purposes of cooling or combustion.

(17) In Scots English, the peak of a cap.

(18) In pinball, a hole on the playfield that catches a ball, but eventually returns it to play in one way or another.

(19) In surfboard design, the raised end of a board.

(20) In music (often as “scoop up”), to begin a vocal note slightly below the target pitch and then to slide up to the target pitch, prevalent particularly in country & western music.

1300–1350: From the Middle English scope & schoupe, from the Middle Dutch scoep, scuep, schope & schoepe (bucket for bailing water) and the Middle Dutch schoppe, scoppe & schuppe (a scoop, shovel (the modern Dutch being schop (spade)), from the Proto-Germanic skuppǭ & skuppijǭ, from the primitive Indo-European kep & skep- (to cut, to scrape, to hack).  It was cognate with the Old Frisian skuppe (shovel), the Middle Low German schōpe (scoop, shovel), the German Low German Schüppe & Schüpp (shovel), the German Schüppe & Schippe (shovel, spade) and related to the Dutch schoep (vessel for baling).  The mid-fourteenth century Middle English verb scōpen (to bail out, draw out with a scoop) was from the noun and was from the Middle Low German schüppen (to draw water), from the Middle Dutch schoppen, from the Proto-Germanic skuppon (source also of the Old Saxon skeppian, the Dutch scheppen, the Old High German scaphan and the German schöpfen (to scoop, ladle out), from the primitive Indo-European root skeubh- (source also of the Old English sceofl (shovel) and the Old Saxon skufla.

Sherman L Kelly's (1869–1952) ice-cream scoop (the dipper; 1935) was a masterpiece of modern industrial design and thought sufficiently aesthetically pleasing to be a permanent exhibit in New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).  Its most clever feature was the fluid encased in the handle; being made from cast aluminum, the heat from the user's hands was transferred to the cup, obviating the need for the moving parts sometimes used to separate the ice-cream for dishing out.  The dipper is like the pencil, one of those designs which really can't be improved.

The meaning “hand-shovel with a short handle and a deep, hollow receptacle” dates from the late fifteenth century while the extended sense of “an instrument for gouging out a piece” emerged by 1706 while the colloquial use to mean “a big haul” was from 1893.  The journalistic sense of “the securing and publication of exclusive information in advance of a rival” was an invention of US English, first used in 1874 in the newspaper business, echoing the earlier commercial verbal slang which imparted the sense of “appropriate so as to exclude competitors”, the use recorded in 1850 but thought to be considerably older.  The meaning "remove soft or loose material with a concave instrument" dates from the early seventeenth century while sense of “action of scooping” was from 1742; that of “amount in a scoop” being from 1832.  The noun scooper (one who scoops) was first used in the 1660s and the word was adopted early in the nineteenth century to describe “a tool for scooping, especially one used by wood-engravers”, the form the agent noun from the verb scoop.  Scoop is a noun & verb, scooper & scoopful are nouns and scooped & scooping are verbs; the noun plural is scoops.

XPLR//Create’s fluid dynamics tests comparing the relative efficiency of ducts (left) & scoops (right).

In air-induction management (to the engines in cars, boats, aircraft etc), a scoop is a device which captures external the air-flow and directs it for purposes of cooling or combustion.  An air scoop differs from an air duct in that a scoop stands proud of a structure's surface allowing air to be "rammed" into its ducting while a duct is an aperture integrated into the structure, "sucking" air in from the low pressure zone created by its geometry.  For a given size of aperture, a scoop can achieve an airflow up to twice that of a duct but that doesn't of necessity mean as scoop is always preferable, the choice depending on the application.  In situations where optimal aerodynamic efficiency is desired, a duct may be chosen because scoops can increase frontal area and almost always, regardless of placement, leave a wake of turbulent air, further increasing drag.  It's thus one of those trade-offs with which engineers are familiar: If a scoop is used then sufficient air is available for purposes of cooling & combustion but at the cost of aerodynamic efficiency while if a duct is fitted, drag is reduced but the internal air-flow might be inadequate.

NACA Ducts: 1969 Ford Shelby Mustang GT500 (left), 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1 351 (centre) & 1972 Ford Falcon GTHO Phase IV (Right).

When Ford introduced NACA ducts on the 1971 Mustangs (subsequently adopted by Ford Australia in 1973 for the XB Falcon), whether in error or to take advantage of the public’s greater “brand-awareness” of the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA), they were promoted as “NASA ducts”.  In fairness, the two institutions were related, NASA created in 1958 after the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was dissolved, the process essentially a name change although much had changed since the NACA’s formation in 1915, the annual budget then US$5000 and the dozen committee members unpaid.  The NACA duct was one of many innovations the institution provided to commercial and military aviation and in the post-war years race cars began to appear with them, positioned variously to channel air to radiators, brakes and fuel induction systems as required.

Scoops: 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 (left), 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 428 CobraJet (with shaker scoop) (centre) & 1974 Pontiac Trans Am 455 SD (with rearward-facing scoop) (right).

From those pragmatic purposes, the ducts migrated to road cars where often they were hardly a necessity and, in some cases, merely decorative, no plumbing sitting behind what was actually a fake aperture.  Scoops appeared too, some appearing extravagantly large but there were applications where the volume of air required was so high that a NACA duct which would provide for the flow simply couldn’t be fashioned.  That said, on road cars, there were always suspicions that some scoops might be fashionably rather than functionally large, the lines drawn in the styling and not the engineering office.  There was innovation in scoops too, some rearward facing to take advantage of the inherently cool, low pressure air which accumulated in the cowl area at the base of the windscreen although the best remembered scoops are probably the “shakers”, assemblies protruding through a hole in the hood (bonnet) and attached directly to the air-cleaner which sat atop the carburetor, an arrangement which shook as the engine vibrated.  By such things, men are much amused.

The inaugural meeting of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), 23 April 1915.

A New York Post scoop, 29 June 2007.  This was the Murdoch press's biggest scoop since the publication in 1983 of the "Hitler Diaries".  The "diaries" turned out to be forgeries; the picture of Lindsay Lohan resting in a Cadillac was genuine.