Stack

Stack (pronounced stak)

(1) A more or less orderly pile or heap.

(2) A set of shelves for books or other materials ranged compactly one above the other, as in a library.

(3) As smoke-stack, a number of chimneys or flues grouped together (and used originally to describe an especially tall structure).

(4) A vertical duct for conveying warm air from a leader to a register on an upper story of a building.

(5) A vertical waste pipe or vent pipe serving a number of floors.

(6) In informal use, a great quantity or number.

(7) In radio, an antenna consisting of a number of components connected in a substantially vertical series.

(8) In computing, a linear list arranged so that the last item stored is the first item retrieved and an area in a memory for temporary storage

(9) In military jargon, a conical, free-standing group of three rifles placed on their butts and hooked together with stacking swivels.

(10) In air traffic control, as air stack or stack-up, groups of airplanes flying nearly circular patterns at various altitudes over an airport where crowded runways, a low cloud ceiling, or other temporary conditions prevent immediate landings.

(11) In historic English measure for coal and wood, equal to 106 cubic feet (3m³).

(12) In geology, a column of rock isolated from a shore by the action of waves.

(13) In poker and some other games, the quantity of chips held by a player at a given point in a gambling game.

(14) To arrange or select unfairly in order to force a desired result, especially to load (a jury, committee, etc.) with members having a biased viewpoint.

(15) In Australian slang, to crash (typically a bike, skateboard etc).

(16) In recreational drugs as "stacked pill", a dose (most associated with MDMA) with an external coating in several (stacked) colors.

1250–1300: From the Middle English stak (pile, heap or group of things) from a Scandinavian source akin to the Old Norse stakkr (haystack), thought to be from the Proto-Germanic stakkoz & stakon- (a stake), from the primitive Indo-European stog-, a variant of steg (pole; stick (source of the English "stake")), the source also of the Old Church Slavonic stogu (heap), the Russian stog (haystack) and the Lithuanian stokas (pillar).  It was cognate with the Danish stak and the Swedish stack (heap, stack).

Noted stackers, same cause; different effect: Liz Truss & Xi Jinping with their predecessors.

Especially in politics, the idea of loading the membership of some body (a committee, a branch meeting etc) so that votes may be controlled is an ancient (if not noble) practice but it wasn't described as "stacking" until the early twentieth century.  In some jurisdictions, the practice of "branch stacking" (paying for people to enroll in a political party, many of whom may not be aware of their involvement) has been made unlawful but the technique seems still widespread.  Recent examples at the more exalted level of executive government include Liz Truss (b 1975; UK prime-minister for a few weeks in 2022) who stacked her famously brief administration exclusively with her supporters regardless of their talent and Xi Jinping (b 1953; paramount leader of the People's Republic of China since 2012) who, when re-structing the seven member Standing Committee of the Politburo after securing a third term in office, ensured no dissenting voices were likely to be heard.  This worked out not well for Ms Truss; Mr Xi expects better things. 

Stacked: Lindsay Lohan photographed in a pleasing aspect.

Stack in the sense of Australian slang (often as "stacked it") means "to crash" in some way, typically from a skateboard, scooter or bike and (to clarify things) the word was memorably used by #metoo campaigner Grace Tame to explain an injury sustained just after she'd upset the ruling Liberal party.  In the sub-culture of recreational drugs, "stacked pills" are those with a layered color scheme suggesting some interesting variation of ingredients (although all the evidence suggests the finish is purely decorative); among the MDMA crowd "stacked disco biscuits" were said to be a 1990s favorite.  As applied to the (noun) shelves in libraries upon which books are (verb) stacked, use dates from 1879 and as a description of the chimneys of factories, locomotives etc it came into use in the mid-1820s.  The use in computing (the best known of which is probably the IP (Internet Protocol) stack)) dates from 1960 when the word was use to describe software consisting two or more components, the loading of which is dependent on an earlier part, hence the idea of layers which stack upon each-other.  As a modifier it was used to describe the haystack in the mid-fifteenth century and in industrial architecture the smoke-stack (a very tall factory chimney) dates from the mid 1820s (although the structures pre-date the use).  The use of smoke-stack was later picked up by naval architects and was applied also to steam locomotives although these exhausts weren't disproportionately tall.  The verb stack emerged in early fourteenth century agriculture in the sense of "to pile up the grain into a stack" and was thus directly from the noun.  Perhaps surprisingly, the adjectival use of stacked appears undocumented until 1796 when it was used as a past participle to describe the clusters of hay assembled at harvest but etymologists suspect it had long been in oral use.  The adjectival use of stacked to suggest a woman who is pleasingly (even perhaps slightly disproportionately) curvaceous dates from 1942.

DeSoto's stacked tailamps

1957 DeSoto Adventurer Convertible.

DeSoto's signature triple stacked taillamps were a footnote in Detroit's macropterous era of the late 1950s, the style making possible the distinctive vertical arrangement.  Chevrolet would for years make the triple lamps a trademark of their more expensive lines (although, apart from the odd special built for the show circuit, they resisted the temptation to add a third to the Corvette) but they always had them in a less memorable horizontal array.  DeSoto's motif was Chrysler's most successful use of the fins but it wasn't enough to save the brand  which was crowded out of the mid-priced market, not only by competition from General Motors (GM) and Ford but also by intra-corporate cannibalization, squeezed from below by Dodge and from above by Chrysler's new Newport line.  Demand for DeSotos collapsed and that so many were built in 1960 was simply to use up the large inventory of parts exclusive to the brand, the last of the line, heavily discounted, not sold until well into 1961.

Open stack exhausts

The exhaust systems of most internal combustion engines are designed to allow as efficient an operation as possible over a broad range of engine speeds while performing as quietly as is required.  Unlike engines used on the road, those designed for competition aren’t as compromised by the need for a wide powerband and quiet operation so open stack exhausts, optimized for flow and the reduction of back-pressure, are attractive.

Stacked: BRM P57 in its original configuration.

During the 1950s, despite engine capacity having being reduced from 4.5 (275 cubic inch) to 2.5 (153 cubic inch) litres, speeds in Formula One were increasing so the sport’s governing body (then the  Commission Sportive Internationale (CSI)), a crew almost as dopey about such things as the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) are now), reacted by imposing a further reduction to 1.5 litres (92 cubic inch).  The 1.5 litre formula ran between 1961 and 1965 but came under increasing criticism as being unworthy of Formula One status in an age when big-engined machinery in other categories was attracting such interest.  The rules did however compel designers and engineers to conjure up some exquisite voiturettes.  BRM’s jewel-like 1.5 litre V8 was the first since the one-off Mercedes-Benz W165 built for the 1939 Tripoli Grand Prix and proved successful, winning the 1962 drivers’ and constructors’ championships.  To extract the maximum from the tiny V8, BRM initially ran them with eight, slightly angled, open-stack exhaust headers which were effective but, because of the limits of the metallurgy of the era they were prone to working loose so, with only the slightest sacrifice in top-end power, during 1962 an orthodox horizontal system was fabricated as a replacement.

Stacked: Graham Hill, 14th BRDC International Trophy, Silverstone, 12 May 1962.

BRM's chassis for the 1.5 litre formula was actually ready before the new (P56) V8 so in 1961 it was fitted with the widely-used four cylinder Coventry Climax unit which proved uncompetitive against the various configurations of the V6 used in the Ferrari 156 F1 (the "sharknose").  Confusingly, in its debut season, BRM labelled the car the P48/P57 while in 1962 the official name was P578; subsequently just about everybody called the thing the P57 and although lacking the charisma of the earlier and later sixteen cylinder cars it was the factory's most successful engine/chassis combination and wasn't replaced until 1964, one private team even (without success) campaigning the P57 into 1965.

Destacked: Graham Hill, 1962 South African Grand Prix, East London, 29 December 1962.

Velocity

Velocity (pronounced vuh-los-i-tee)

(1) Rapidity of motion or operation; swiftness; a certain measurement of speed.

(2) In mechanics and physics, a measure of the rate of motion of a body expressed as the rate of change of its position in a particular direction with time.  It is measured in metres per second, miles per hour etc.

(3) In casual, non technical use, a synonym for speed.

1540-1550: From the Middle French vélocité, from the Latin velocitatem (nominative vēlōcitās) (swiftness; speed), from vēlōx (genitive velocis) (swift, speedy, rapid, quick) of uncertain origin.  It may be related either to volō (I fly), volāre (to fly) or vehere (carry) from the primitive Indo-European weǵh- (to go, move, transport in a vehicle) although some etymologists prefer a link with the Proto-Italic weksloks from the primitive Indo-European weg-slo-, a suffixed form of the root weg- (to be strong, be lively).

Although in casual use, velocity and speed are often used interchangeably, their meanings differ.  Speed is a scalar quantity referring to how fast an object is moving; the rate at which an object covers distance.  Velocity is the rate at which an object changes position in a certain direction. It is calculated by the displacement of space per a unit of time in a certain direction. Velocity deals with direction, while speed does not.  In summary, velocity is speed with a direction, while speed does not have a direction.

The velocity stack

Velocity stacks (also informally known as trumpets or air horns) are trumpet-shaped devices, sometimes of differing lengths, fitted to the air entry of an engine's induction system, feeding carburetors or fuel injection.  Velocity stacks permit a smooth and even flow of air into the intake tract at high velocities with the air-stream adhering to the pipe walls, a process known as laminar flow.  They allow engineers to modify the dynamic tuning range of the intake tract by functioning as a resonating pipe which can adjust the frequency of pressure pulses based on its length within the tract.  Depending on the length and shape of the stack, the flow can be optimized for the desired power and torque characteristics, thus their popularity in competition where the quest is often for top-end power but the flow can also be tuned instead to produce enhanced low or mid-range performance for specialized use.

1973 McLaren M20C.

The 1968 McLaren M8A was built for the Canadian-American Challenge Cup (the Can-Am) and used a new aluminum version (later sold for street use as the ZL1) of the 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) big-block Chevrolet V8.  Dry sumped and fuel injected, it was rated at 625 bhp.  A series for unlimited displacement sports cars, the wonderful thing about the Can-Am was the brevity of the rules which essentially were limited to (1) enclosed body work and (2) two seats.  With engines eventually growing beyond 490 cid (8.0 litres) and reaching close to 800 bhp, the McLarens dominated the series for five years, their era ended only by the arrival of the turbo-panzers, the turbocharged Porsche 917s.  The McLarens remained competitive however, the final race of the 1974 series won by a McLaren  M20.    

1970 Ferrari 512S.

Ferrari built 25 512S models in 1969-1970 to comply with the FIA’s homologation rules as a Group 5 sports car to contest the 1970 International Championship for Makes.  It used a five-litre V12 and was later modified to become the 512M which, other than modified road cars, was the last Ferrari built for sports car racing, the factory instead focusing on Formula One.

1965 Coventry Climax FWMW flat-16 prototype.

Coventry Climax developed their FWMW between 1963-1965, intending it for use in Formula One.  A 1.5 litre flat-16, both the Brabham and Lotus teams designed cars for this engine but it was never raced and the engines never proceeded beyond the prototype stage.  Like many of the exotic and elaborate designs to which engineers of the era were attracted, the disadvantages imposed by the sheer bulk and internal friction were never overcome and the promised power increases existed in such a narrow power band it’s usefulness in competition was negligible.  Even on the test-benches it was troublesome, the torsional vibrations of the long crankshaft once destroying an engine undergoing testing.  It was Coventry at its climax; after the débacle of the FWMW, the company withdrew from Formula One, never to return.

1970 Porsche flat-16 prototype.

Porsche developed their Flat-16 in the search for the power needed to compete with the big-capacity machines in the Can-Am series.  Unable further to enlarge their flat-12, their solution was to add a third more cylinders.  As an engine, it was a success and delivered the promised power but the additional length of the engine necessitated adding to the wheelbase of the cars and that upset their balance, drivers finding them unstable.  Porsche mothballed the flat-16 and resorted instead to forced-aspiration, the turbocharged flat-12 so effective that ultimately it was banned but not before it was tweaked to deliver a reputed 1500+ horsepower in Can-Am qualifying trim and, in 1975, at the Talladega raceway it was used to set the FIA closed course speed record at 221.160 mph (355.923 km/h); the mark stood for five years.

1966 Ford 289 V8 in GT40 Mk 1.

Not all the Ford GT40s had the photogenic cluster of eight velocity stacks.  When the Ford team arrived at Le Mans in 1966, their Mk II GT40s were fitted with a detuned version of the 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) big-block FE engines used on the NASCAR circuits and instead of the multiple twin-choke carburetors with the velocity stacks familiar to the Europeans, it was fed by a single four barrel unit under a fairly agricultural looking air intake.  On the GT40s, the velocity stacks looked best on the 289 and 302 cubic inch (4.7 & 4.9 litre) small-block Windsor V8s, the ones built with the four downdraft Weber carburetors thought most charismatic.

1967 BRM H-16.

In typically English fashion, the 1949 BRM V16 is celebrated as a glorious failure.  In grand prix racing, it failed for many reasons but in one aspect, it was a great success: the supercharged 1.5 litre engine generated prodigious, if hard to handle, power.  Not discouraged, when a three litre formula was announced for 1966, BRM again found the lure of sixteen cylinders irresistible though this time, aspiration would be atmospheric.  It actually powered a Lotus to one grand prix victory in Formula One but that was its sole success.  Although nice and short, it was heavy and it was tall, the latter characteristic contributing to a high centre of gravity, exacerbated by the need to elevate the mounting of the block to make space for the exhaust system of the lower eight cylinders.  It was also too heavy and the additional power it produced was never enough to offset the many drawbacks.  Withdrawn from competition after two seasons and replaced by a more conventional V12, the FIA later changed the rules to protect BRM from themselves, banning sixteen cylinder engines.

1969 Ferrari 312P.

Build to comply with Group 6 regulations for prototype sports cars, the Ferrari 312 P was raced by the factory towards the end of the classic era for sports car racing which dated back to the early 1950s.  Fielded first with a three litre V12, it was re-powered with a flat-12 in 1971 and has often been described as the Ferrari Formula One car with bodywork and while a simplification, given the engineering differences between the two, that was the concept.  It appeared on the grid to contest the World Sportscar Championship in 1969, a return from a year of self-imposed exile after one of Enzo Ferrari's many arguments with the FIA.  Needing reliability for distance racing, the Formula One engine was slightly detuned and, as in the open wheeler on which it was based, acted as an integral load-bearing part of the structure.  Unlike Ferrari's earlier sports cars, this time the classic array of Webber carburetors was eschewed, the velocity stacks sitting atop Lucas mechanical fuel-injection.

Acephalous

Acephalous (pronounced ey-sef-uh-luhs)

(1) In zoology, a creature without a head or lacking a distinct head (applied to bivalve mollusks).

(2) In the social sciences, political science & sociology, a system of organisation in a society with no centralized authority (without a leader or ruler), where power is in some way distributed among all or some of the members of the community.

(3) In medicine, as (1) acephalia, a birth defect in which the head is wholly or substantially missing & (2), the congenital lack of a head (especially in a parasitic twin).

(4) In engineering, an internal combustion piston engine without a cylinder head.

(5) In botany, a plant having the style spring from the base, instead of from the apex (as is the case in certain ovaries).

(6) In information & communications technology (ICT), a class of hardware and software (variously headless browser, headless computer, headless server etc) assembled lacking some feature or object analogous with a “head” or “high-level” component.

(7) In prosody, deficient in the beginning, as a line of poetry that is missing its expected opening syllable.

(8) In literature, a manuscript lacking the first portion of the text.

1725-1735: From French acéphale (the construct being acéphal(e) + -ous), from the Medieval Latin acephalous, from the Ancient Greek ἀκέφαλος (aképhalos) (headless), the construct being ἀ- (a-) (not) + κεφαλή (kephalḗ) (head), thus synchronically: a- +‎ -cephalous.  The translingual prefix a- was from the Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-) (not, without) and in English was used to form taxonomic names indicating a lack of some feature that might be expected.  The a- prefix (with differing etymologies) was also used to form words imparting various senses.  Acephalous & acephalic are adjectives, acephalousness, acephalia & acephaly are nouns and acephalously is an adverb; the noun plural is acephali.

In biology (although often literally synonymous with “headless”), it was also used to refer to organisms where the head(s) existed only partially, thus the special use of the comparative "more acephalous" and the superlative "most acephalous", the latter also potentially misleading because it referred to extreme malformation rather than absence (which would be something wholly acephalous).  In biology, the companion terms are anencephalous (without a brain), bicephalous (having two heads), monocephalous (used in botany to describe single-headed, un-branched composite plants) & polycephalous (many-headed).

Acephalous: Lindsay Lohan “headless woman” Halloween costume.

The word’s origins were in botany and zoology, the use in political discussion in the sense of “without a leader” dating from 1751.  The Acephali (plural of acephalus) were a people, said to live in Africa, which were the product of the imagination of the writers of Antiquity, said by both the Greek historian Herodotus (circa 487-circa 425 BC) and Romano-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (circa 37–circa 100) to have no heads (sometimes removable heads) and Medieval historians picked up the notion in ecclesiastical histories, describing thus (1) the Eutychians (a Christian sect in the year 482 without a leader), (2) those bishops certain clergymen not under regular diocesan control and later a class of levelers in the time of Henry I (circa 1068–1135; King 1100-1135).  The word still sometimes appears when discussing religious orders, denominations (or even entire churches) which reject the notion of a separate priesthood or a hierarchical order including such as bishops, the ultimate evolution of which is popery.

Acephalousness in its age of mass production: Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792) kneeling next to her confessor, contemplates the guillotine on the day of her execution, 16 October 1793.  Colorized version of a line engraving with etching, 1815.

In political science, acephalous refers to societies without a leader or ruler in the Western sense of the word but it does not of necessity imply an absence of leadership or structure, just that the arrangements don’t revolve around the one ruler.  Among the best documented examples were the desert-dwelling tribes of West Africa (notably those inhabiting the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (now Ghana)), the arrangements of which required the British colonial administrators (accustomed to the ways of India under the Raj with its Maharajas and institutionalized caste system) to adjust their methods somewhat to deal with notions such as distributed authority and collective decision making.  That said, acephalous has sometimes been used too freely.  It is inevitably misapplied when speaking of anarchist societies (except in idealized theoretical models) and often misleading if used of some notionally collectivist models which are often conventional leadership models in disguise or variations of the “dictatorship of the secretariat” typified by the early structure of Stalinism.

The Acephalous Commer TS3

A curious cul-de-sac in engineering, Commer’s acephalous TS3 Diesel engine (1954-1972) was a six-cylinder, two-stroke system, the three cylinders in a horizontal layout, each with two pistons with their crowns facing each other, the layout obviating any need for a cylinder head.  The base of each piston was attached to a connecting rod and a series of rockers which then attached to another connecting rod, joined to the single, centrally located crankshaft at the bottom of the block, a departure from other “opposed piston” designs, almost all of which used twin crankshafts.  The TS3 was compact, powerful and light, the power-to-weight ratio exceptional because without components such as a cylinder heads, camshafts or valve gear, internal friction was low and thermal efficiency commendably high, the low fuel consumption especially notable.  In other companies, engineers were attracted to the design but accountants were sceptical and there were doubts reliability could be maintained were capacity significantly increased (the TS3 was 3.3 litres (200 cubic inch) and when Chrysler purchased Commer in 1967, development ceased although an eight-piston prototype had performed faultlessly in extensive testing.  Production thus cease in 1972 but although used mostly in trucks, there was also a marine version, many examples of which are still running, the operators maintaining them in service because of the reliability, power and economy (although the exhaust emissions are at the shockingly toxic levels common in the 1960s).

Acephalous information & communications technology (ICT)

A headless computer (often a headless server) is a device designed to function without the usual “head” components (monitor, mouse, keyboard) being attached.  Headless systems are usually administered remotely, typically over a network connection although some still use serial links, especially those emulating legacy systems.  Deployed to save both space and money, numerous headless computers and servers still exist although the availability of KVM (and related) hardware which can permit even dozens of machines to be hard-wired to the one keyboard/mouse/monitor/ combination has curbed their proliferation.

A headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface (GUI) and can thus be controlled only be from a command-line interface or with a (usually) automated script, often deployed in a network environment.  Obviously not ideal for consumer use, they’re ideal for use in distributed test environments or automating tasks which rely on interaction between web pages.  Until methods of detection improved, headless browsers were a popular way of executing ploys such as credential stuffing, page-view building or automated clicking but there now little to suggest they’re now anymore frequently used as a vector for nefarious activity than conventional browsers with a GUI attached.

Browsing for nerds: Google’s acephalous Headless Chrome.

Headless software is analogous with but goes beyond the concept of a headless computer in that it’s designed specifically to function without not just a GUI or monitor but even the hardware necessary to support the things (notably the video card or port).  Whereas some software will fail to load if no video support is detected, headless software proceeds regardless, either because it’s written without such parameter checking or it includes responses which pass “false positives”, emulating the existence of absent software.  Headless software operated in a specialized (horizontal in terms of industries supplied but vertical in that the stuff exists usually in roles such as back-to-front-end comms on distributed servers) niche, the advantage being the two end can remain static (as some can be for years) while bridge between the two remains the more maintenance intensive application programming interface (API), the architecture affording great flexibility in the software stack.

Tumblehome

Tumblehome (pronounced tuhm-buhl-hohm)

(1) In naval architecture, an inward and upward slope of the middle body of a vessel; of the sides of a ship: To incline or slope inwards, to contract above the point of extreme breadth.

(2) A conceptually similar shape applied, in reverse, to the upper body of an automobile.

1828: A compound word, tumble + home.  Tumble was from the Middle English tumblen (to fall over and over again, tumble), frequentative of the Middle English tumben (to fall, leap, dance), from the Old English tumbian, from the Proto-Germanic tūmōną (to turn, rotate).  It was cognate with the Middle Dutch tumelen and the Middle Low German tumelen & tummelen.  Home was from the Middle English home, hom, hoom & ham, from the Old English hām (village, hamlet, manor, estate, home, dwelling, house, region, country), from the Proto-West Germanic haim, from the Proto-Germanic haimaz (home, village), from the Proto-Indo-European tḱóymos (village, home), from the root tḱey-.  The (rare and probably extinct) alternative spelling is tumble home.  Tumblehome is a noun; the noun plural is tumblehomes.

The meaning of the word tumblehome has been well understood from its first appearance in the early nineteenth century but the origin has never been obvious.  Shipbuilders had for centuries been using variations of the design for a number of reasons but the first known instance of the word dates only from 1828 and then without explanation, suggesting the term may already have been in common use, at least within the industry.  An 1848 reference from a shipwright does however hint at some sense of novelty, noting “… the upper works usually incline towards the middle line, or as it is termed “tumble home”.  The word “tumble” to refer to the sides of ships appears to have been used at least as early as 1687 but the compound tumblehome seems not to have emerged for another hundred and fifty-odd years.  The idea always summoned was of the imagery of the sides of a ship “tumbling down” the slope created but why “home” was added remains a mystery, the assumption being it was based either on (1) an association with certain domestic architectural styles of the time (2) the romantic notion of the sea, to which the tumblehome falls, being "home" for sailors or  (3) the idea of a dilapidated house in the throes of "tumbling down", fallen bits an pieces accumulating at the bottom.

Big ships and fast cars

In automotive design (upper), the term is applied when the width of the cabin (cockpit or glasshouse) reduces as the height rises.  Although curved glass in the side windows of cars began widely to be adopted in the mid-1960s, thus creating a mild tumblehome effect, the term is applied only when it is sufficiently severe to be apparent to casual viewers.

In naval architecture (lower), the geometry is reversed, a tumblehome define as a hull which flares out as the sides approach the waterline.  Although in some vessels, the effect is barely detectable by the naked eye, it’s a technical term and applies to all hulls which dimensionally qualify.  The opposite, the classic shape for ships’ hull, is called the flare.

USS Brooklyn, 1896.

Tumblehome, unless taken to extremes, was functional in that it improved stability in warships under sail; sailing ships heel (they tend to lean over when moving) and tumblehome reduced this.  At the time, the biggest contributor to a warship’s mass on the upper decks was the guns and a tumblehome design, moving the centre of gravity lower, allowed armament to be maintained or even increased without further loss of stability.  Additionally, there was the benefit of making it harder for boarding parties to climb aboard.  In commercial shipping, vessels were long taxed on the basis of the square footage of a ship’s deck and fat ships with a pronounced tumble carrying the same freight but taxed less, were attractive.  Government fiscal policy thus influenced and distorted design and engineering principles in the same way tax arrangements of windows affected architecture and those on cylinder bores (adversely) affected engine design.

Lamborghini LP500 Countach prototype, 1971.

The Countach had one of the most extreme implementations, the angle meaning it was possible for only part of the side-window to be lowered but at least the Italians were more thoughtful than the Germans; in 1954, facing a similar challenge with the side-glass on the 300 SL (W198 1954-1957) gullwing, Mercedes-Benz simply fixed the panes, ventilation provided only by small quarterlights.  Neither flow-through ventilation or air-conditioning was available so driving in a gullwing could be hot and sticky experience and there's a reason they're sometimes seen being driven (at low speeds and not on public roads) with at least one door open. .  The tumblehome is used by high-performance cars because of the aerodynamic advantages it confers, reducing frontal area an allowing the curve of the greenhouse to be optimized for air-flow, lowering resistance.  Because of great advances made during the late twentieth century, refinements to tumblehomes no longer deliver the 3-5% improvements in a drag coefficient (CD) which once was possible, engineers now pursuing factional gains.  The origins in cars however lay in the quest for more interior space and for mass-market vehicles, bulging out the sides gained the odd vital inch and the technique, combined with curved side glass, has become almost universal although there has been the odd deviation.  Stylists are predicting tumblehomes are likely to become more exaggerated as sides need to be bulkier to meet more rigorous side-impact regulations and roof-lines are lowered slightly in the quest to reduce drag.

Lindsay Lohan in tumblehome blonde wig.

What professional hair stylists call “the tumblehome” is a triangulated shaping which is most cases can’t be achieved without an expert application of product and when sported by models on photo-shoots, it’s common for the angles and an illusion of volume to be achieved with engineering no more complex than a sheet of cardboard (cut to suit) being attached with hairclips to the back of the head.  The look can however be achieved with synthetics which can be persuaded sustainably to behave in a way human hair naturally resists and Lady Gaga (b 1986) made a tumblehome wig a signature feature of her “Fame Monster” period (2009-2010).  With natural hair, a tumblehome with hair a little shorter than that of Lady Gaga’s wig is sometimes technically achievable given the right hair and a generous use of product the sideways projection would be noticeably less.

Lady gaga in Fame Monster mode.

The tumblehome style with the exaggerated elongations al la Gaga is rarely seen and usually represents a lot of work.  However, many take about as much effort to avoid the similar geometry of the “pyramid head”: a triangular shape with a flat crown area which flares to a wide bushy shape at the ends.  A function of length and weight for those with curly hair, pyramids happen usually when the strands are of almost uniform length and the curls tend to “stack”, the weight meaning the roots sit flattest on the scalp while towards the ends where the effective volume (hair + space) is greatest, the curled strands move sideways, unlike the behavior of straight hair which is purely downwards.

Lindsay Lohan with pyramid head, Saturday Night Live, 2004.

Stylists recommend layers as the best tactic to minimize the triangulation, the strategy essentially to create longer, diagonal layers to frame the face, meaning the remaining curls “sit into each other”.  What this does is simply physics, the layering on the surface reducing the weight, increasing the percentage of the volume on the crown area and although some are resistant, the best results will probably be achieved if the hair is cut dry because it will be presented at its natural weight.  When wet, the moisture content will disguise the extent of the left-right movement and exaggerate the up-down.  The shorter the layers of course the more effective the amelioration but this can be too radical for some so clients need to be turned into realists.

Port

Port (pronounced pohrt (U) or pawrt (non-U))

(1) A city, town, or other place where ships load or unload.

(2) A place along a coast in which ships may take refuge from storms; harbor.

(3) A place designated in law as a point of entry where persons and merchandise are allowed to pass, by water or land, in and out of a country and where customs officers are stationed to inspect or appraise imported goods.

(4) The left-side of a vessel or aircraft, facing forward (formerly called larboard).

(5) Any of a class of very fortified sweet wines, mostly dark-red, originally from Portugal.

(6) An opening in the side or other exterior part of a ship for admitting air and light or for taking on cargo.

(7) In machinery, an aperture for the passage of steam, air, water etc.

(8) In military use, a small aperture in an armored vehicle, aircraft, or fortification through which a gun can be fired or a camera directed.

(9) In computer hardware, a physical connection (serial, parallel, USB, SCSI etc) to which a peripheral device or a transmission line from a remote terminal can be attached.

(10) In computer software, an address, part of TCP and the IP stack.

(11) The raised centre portion on a bit for horses.

(12) A gate or portal, as in the entrance to a town or fortress (chiefly Scots, now archaic).

(13) In Queensland, Australia, an alternative term for suitcase (increasingly rare).

(14) In computer programming, to modify existing code written for one operating system so it will run on another; a set of files used to build and install a binary executable file from the source code of an application.

(15) The bearing or carriage of one’s self (now archaic, survives as deportment, the once synonymous portance now obsolete).

(16) An abbreviation of Portugal for certain purposes.

(17) In internal combustion engines, an aperture through which (1) the fuel-air mixture passes to reach the inlet valve(s) to the combustion chamber and (2) exhaust gasses from the combustion process pass after exiting through the exhaust valve(s).

(18) In rowing, a “sweep rower” who rows primarily with an oar on the port side.

(19) In the sports of curling & lawn bowls, a space between two stones or bowls wide enough for a delivered stone or bowl to pass through.

(20) In military terminology (also as “at the high port), to hold or carry a weapon with both hands so that it lays diagonally across the front of the body, with the barrel or similar part near the left shoulder and the right hand grasping the small of the stock; to throw the weapon into this position on the command “Port arms!”.

(21) In telephony, to carry or transfer an existing telephone number from one telephone service provider to another.

(22) In law, to transfer a voucher or subsidy from one jurisdiction to another (mostly US use).

(23) In artisan candle-making, a frame for wicks, the word in this context sometimes used generally as a device which hold something in place while being worked on.

(24) In linguistics, an abbreviation of portmanteau.

Pre 900: From the Old English and Middle English port (harbor, haven), reinforced by the Old French port (harbor, port; mountain pass), the Old English and Old French both from the Latin portus (port, harbor (originally "entrance, passage" and figuratively "a place of refuge, asylum")) from the primitive Indo-European pértus (crossing (and thus distantly cognate with ford)) from prtu- (a going, a passage), from the root per- (to lead, pass over) and related to the Sanskrit parayati (carries over), the Ancient Greek poros (journey, passage, way) & peirein (to pierce, to run through), from the Latin porta (gate, door), portāre (passage; to carry) & peritus (experienced), the Avestan peretush (passage, ford, bridge), the Armenian hordan (go forward), the Welsh rhyd (ford), the Old Church Slavonic pariti (to fly), the Old English faran (to go, journey) and the Old Norse fjörðr (inlet, estuary).  The present participle porting, the past participle is ported and the noun plural is ported.

The meaning "gateway; entrance etc" was from the Old English port (portal, door, gate, entrance), from the Old French porte (gate, entrance), from the Latin porta (city gate, gate; door, entrance), from the primitive Indo-European root per-.  The meaning "to carry" was from the Middle French porter, from the Latin portāre (passage; to carry) and is used in this sense still as “ported & porting”;  The use is Queensland, Australia to describe a suitcase as “a port” is fading as the use of regional forms diminishes.  The circa 1300 use to mean of "bearing, mien" (from circa there was the general sense of "external appearance" which extended by the 1520s to the now-archaic sense of "state, style, establishment") is an adaptation of this in the sense of “how one carries (ie deports) oneself” and survives in the word “deportment” (the once synonymous portance is now obsolete); young ladies at finishing school (a kind of training for husband-hunting) would undertake “deportment class” which apparently really did involve learning to walk with a book balanced on the head so the ideal posture could be learned.

Semiotics at sea: The international convention is port (left) is red, starboard (right) is green & stern (aft) is white (ie clear lens).  This rule governs things like navigation lights, chart markings and architectural schematics.

The meaning "left side of a ship" (looking forward from the stern) dates from the 1540s, from the notion of "the side facing the harbor when a ship is docked”.  It replaced backboard, larboard & leeboard to avoid confusion with starboard when in oral use, eventually confirmed by regulatory order of the Admiralty order in 1844 and US Navy Department in 1846.  The origin of the left-right (larboard/starboard) convention in maritime matters is in the ancient vessels which had a (permanently attached) steering oar on the right, thus dictating the need to moor with the left side parallel with the dock or wharf.  The configuration seems to have been standardized in the early vessels of many cultures because the vast majority of the human population seems long to have been right-handed.  Starboard was from the Middle English sterbord, stere-bourd & stere-burd, from Old English stēorbord, from the Proto-West Germanic steurubord (the construct of all forms steer +‎ board.  The use as an adjective is noted from 1857 but oral use likely pre-dated this.  Interestingly, in 1887, a US report noted “port” had replaced “larboard” among all classes of sailors except the whalers harvesting in the Atlantic and South Pacific although the new term was used in the Arctic fleets.

The figurative sense "place of refuge" is noted from the early fifteenth century, the phrase “any port in a storm” (any refuge is welcomed in adversity) first documented since 1749 but it’s likely it was in the oral use of sailors and others much earlier.  The “port of call” dates from 1810 and is a location scheduled for a visit by a ship; it’s used by both the military and civil shipping.  The phrase “first port of call” can be either a literal description of the first place a ship (or by extension other forms of transport) is to visit or figuratively “the default or usually choice of option”.  The porthole (opening in the side of a ship) dates from circa 1300 and is documented in the terminology of naval architects since 1506; the original use in warships was to describe the embrasures in the side of the ship through which cannons were fired.  What are now thought of as portholes in ships were (from 1788) originally called “air-ports” on the basis they were a "small opening in the side of a ship to admit air and light.

A mid-century modern car port.  The car is a Mercedes-Benz (R107) SL.

A portreeve (from the Middle English port-reve, from the Old English portgerēfa, the construct being port (a walled market town) +‎ gerēfa (reeve (a local official)) was variously a mayor, bailiff magistrate or warder in a port or maritime town; the equivalent office in inland settlements was the borough-reeve (mayor).  The difference was the specific duties attached to officials in places with ports.  The carport (also as also car-port), an adaptation of the French porte-cochère, was formalized in the jargon of architecture in 1939, referring to the practice of lean-to roofs being added to houses to afford weather-protection to cars.  It had become common practice as car ownership grew and many properties couldn’t accommodate a separate garage, or in the case of multiple-vehicle ownership, it couldn’t be enlarged.  The carport became a favourite of modernist architects who tended often to object to space which could be allocated to people being “wasted” on a car but in the affluent post-war years, became a class-identifier, the carport thought a symbol of poverty compared with the integrated or stand-alone double garage.  Portsider (left-handed person) dates from 1913 and was US baseball slang although, technically, it referred to those who batted left-handed rather than left-handers per se (as in cricket, there are right-handers who bat left-handed).  The distinction also existed in boxing, a southpaw originally a fighter who “leads with the left” rather than a left-hander although that does seem to be the modern use.

This is the portable loo of Kim Jong-un, (b 1984, Supreme Leader of the DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) which travels with the Supreme Leader when he visits places in the DPRK (to view missile tests etc).  In commercial parlance, these are known as portaloos.  Note the soldier stationed outside the loo, there to guard against anyone attempting to share the Supreme Leader’s facilities (it’s said the soldier has orders to “shoot to kill”).  Proof of existence of Kim III's portable loo solved one mystery which had divided genetcists and the medical community.  In a biography of the Supreme Leader's father (Kim II: Kim Jong-il (1941–2011; The Dear Leader of DPRK 1994-2011), it had been revealed The Dear Leader was not subject to bowel movements, never needing to defecate or urinate but it was not known if this is was genetic characteristic of the dynasty and therefore enjoyed also by The Supreme Leader.  Now we know.  The noun and adjective portable was from the Middle French portable, from the Latin portabilis.

Seaport describes a port which is costal rather than one on the banks of a river or the shore of a lake.  The airport (facility for commercial air transport) dates from 1902 and became (at lease in civilian use) the preferred description of the place where aircraft arrive and depart (although airfield, field, aerodrome, airstrip, airdrome & landing strip seem still sometimes to find a niche).  Airport came into regular use in 1919 (the use in reference to airships in 1902 was a one-off) and was used first to describe Bader Field, outside Atlantic City, New Jersey which opened in 1910.  The older word for such a place was aerodrome which had an interesting history, coined originally to mean “flying machine” from the Ancient Greek ἀεροδρόμος (aerodrómos) (traversing the air), the newer sense analogous with the French hippodrome, from the Latin hippodromos, from the Ancient Greek ἱππόδρομος (hippódromos), the construct being ἵππος (hippos) (horse) + δρόμος (dromos) (course).  Airport shouldn’t be hyphenated to avoid confusion with the earlier (1788) air-port which is now a ship’s porthole.

Penfords Great Grandfather Rare Tawny gift box, US$244 per 750 ml.

The use to describe the sweet, dark-red wine was from circa 1695, a shortening of Oporto, the city in northwest Portugal from which the wine originally was shipped to England (from O Porto (literally “the port”).  French wines had been preferred in England but various squabbles had for some time almost excluded them, not least because, with anti-French feeling high during the reign of Queen Anne (1665–1714; Queen variously of England, Scotland, Ireland & Great Britain 1702-1714), English politicians ran nasty “don’t buy French” campaigns.  Paul Methuen (circa 1672–1757), the English minister-resident in Lisbon, negotiated a reciprocal agreement (part of the Methuen Treaty of 1703) whereby low tariffs would be imposed on Portuguese wines in exchange for a similar accommodation on English textiles.  Portuguese wine merchants decided to stimulate trade further by spiking port wine with brandy, thereby increasing the alcohol content which gradually induced a change in the national taste and accounts for why to this day English port is stronger.  The other alcohol-related use is porter, a dark style of beer developed in London well-hopped beers made from brown malt, or well-roasted barely.  It’s un-related to port wine or Portugal and gained its eighteenth century name from the popularity the brew enjoyed among street and river porters, porters in that context being the people employed to carry or move luggage, freight etc, a use which survives in hotels, railway stations etc.

Tunnel port heads

Long rendered obsolete by modern fuel delivery systems and advances in the understanding of fluid dynamics, tunnel port heads were an attempt to remove one fundamental drawback of pushrod-activated valves in overhead valve (OHV) engines with crossflow cylinder heads: the restriction the pushrod path imposes on intake port size and shape.  Historically, the shape and size of intake ports was compromised by the need to make room for the pushrod passing from the centre of the engine to the valve lifters above the combustion chambers.  This meant it was rarely possible for intake ports to assume what was thought to be the ideal size and shape for high performance applications.

Ford’s solution in 1965 was a brass tube to house the pushrod, passing directly through the intake port, permitting the port to be as large as possible.  Dubbed the “tunnel port”, surprisingly, flow-tests proved the tube was no impediment to gas movement and the design proved successful, both in the Le Mans winning GT40s and the Galaxies on the NASCAR circuits.  Those however were big-block 427 cubic inch (7 litre) engines and the sheer size of the things disguised the inherent limitation of huge ports: the reduced velocity of gas-flow at low engine speeds which consequently produced power and torque curves unimpressive except high in the rev-range, where they were impressive indeed.  In 1969, needing more power from the small-block (Windsor) 302 cubic inch (4.9 litre) engines used in the Trans-Am series, Ford bolted on tunnel port heads, the results disastrous.  Gas flowed effortlessly and top-end power was prodigious but the cars were used on circuits and, unlike the NASCAR ovals, a broad power-band was needed and the tunnel port 302s were forced to operate at engine speeds apparently beyond the block’s capacity to survive.  The project was soon abandoned.

1968 Ford Mustang 302 tunnel port, Car & Driver comparison test with Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, March 1968.

However, the tunnel port 302s have a charisma and retain a cult-following to this day, the defenders maintaining the failures were only indirectly related to the innovative heads, citing the oiling system which was inadequate to supply the bottom end of the engine under the high lateral loads experienced.  The early versions sucked in a lot of air which caused the bearings to starve for lubrication although this was quickly resolved with the installation of dual-pickup systems.  That bottom end was anyway insufficiently strong to withstand the high engine speeds the tunnel-ports mad possible.  Before long, the race drivers were being told to limit the rpm (revolutions-per-minute (engine speed)) but that defeated the very purpose of the tunnel port.  Many also note that the 302 TPs were built on Ford’s standard engine assembly line whereas the 427 TPs were lovingly hand-assembled by a dedicated crew in a separate facility.  Race teams were used to being able to blueprint and rebuilt engines to with precise clearances using exactly weighted components but were told to use the 302 TPs just as they were delivered.  There seems no doubt there were quality and assembly problems with the engines and those who have subsequently (and for decades) used them in competition (after blueprinting and careful assembly) have reported a high level of reliability.

1969 Ford Mustang Boss 302.

In 1968 however, Ford’s engineers returned to the drawing board, adapting the canted-valve heads from their new small block V8 (Cleveland or 335 series) to sit atop the 302 Windsor.  Their efforts succeeded, the less exotic Boss 302 couldn’t match the tunnel port for top-end power but the torque curve meant it was more suitable for use in the road cars which had to be built in the volume necessary to fulfil the Trans Am homologation rules.  It proved a paragon of reliability.

427 FE tunnel-port cylinder head (upper) showing the hollow brass tunnel passing directly through the intake port compared with a standard 427 FE (lower).