Dagmar

Dagmar (pronounced dag-mahr)

(1) The stage-name adopted by Virginia Ruth "Jennie" Lewis (née Egnor; 1921-2001), a star of 1950s US television (initial upper case).

(2) Slang term for the symmetrically-paired bumper extensions used by a number of US vehicle manufacturers and associated mostly with Cadillac 1946-1958 (initial lowercase).

(3) In the study of marketing, as DAGMAR, the acronym of Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results (usually all upper case).

(4) A female given name from the Germanic languages and of Norse origin, in occasional use since the last nineteenth century (initial upper case).

Pre-1000: A given name of Scandinavian origin, almost always female.  It was the name of a queen of Denmark (1185–1212), a Czech by descent, originally Dragomíra (related to the contemporary Slovak Drahomíra), the construct being the Old Church Slavonic dorgb (dear) + mirb (peace), rendered in medieval Danish under the camouflage of dag (day) + már (maid).  In Danish the meaning is listed as “day” and “glory” and it’s used also in Slovakia, Poland (Dagmara), the Netherlands, Estonia and Germany.  The ultimate source was the the Old Norse name Dagmær, the construct being dagr (day) + mær (daughter; mother; maiden).

The Tsarina (Princess Dagmar; 1847–1928) in 1885 (colorized).

Maria Feodorovna  was known before marriage as Princess Dagmar of Denmark.  She became Empress of Russia upon marriage to Alexander III (1845-1894; Tsar 1881–1894) and was the mother of the last Tsar, Nicholas II (1868–1918; Tsar 1894-1917).  Historians regard Maria Feodorovna as the most glittering of all the Tsarinas.  Renowned for her beauty, her dark eyes were mentioned in both poems and diplomatic dispatches and a glance was said to be able to "fix men to the spot".  She was also one of the most admired "clothes horses" in Europe, her statuesque, slender figure ("tall, thin and sort or weird looking" as the fashion photographers describe their ideal) of the type seen today on catwalks and in London, Paris and Milan, couturiers in the fashion houses  would write letters to the Russian court (including sketches), sometimes offering their services in exchange for nothing more than the royal imprimatur.

The evolution of Cadillac’s dagmars, 1941-1959

Lockheed P-38 Lightning (left) & 1949 Cadillac (right).

On first looking at the 1949 Cadillac, a borrowing of the motif of the tail fins and propeller hubs from the Lockheed P-38 Lightning (first flown in 1939 and built 1941-1945) does seem obvious but while it appears to be true of the fins, all contemporary evidence suggests the conical additions to the front bumper bar were intended by the stylist Harley Earl (1893–1969; then Vice President of Design at General Motors (GM)), to evoke the idea of a speeding artillery shells.  In the twenty-first century, it may seem curious to use the imagery of military munitions in the marketing of consumer goods but that's the way things were once done.  GM claimed also they afforded additional collision protection but given it wasn’t until the 1970s that regulations existed to require front and rear bumpers to be the same height, in many impacts, it’s likely they acted more like like battering rams used on medieval siege engines.

1941 Cadillac.

The bumper guards (later called over-riders) on the 1941 Cadillac were neither novel nor unique but, being on a Cadillac, they were bigger and shinier than many.  Nor was the linking bar unusual, offered by many manufacturers and emulated too by aftermarket suppliers, used often as a mounting bracket for accessory head lamps.  There was nothing unusual about the idea of additional bumper guards (or over-riders) which were not unknown in the early days of the automobile in the nineteenth century and similar devices, entirely functional as protective protuberances can be identified on horse-drawn and other forms of transport dating back centuries.  It was only in the twentieth century they became a styling feature.

1942 Cadillac.

A chromed pair, recognizably dagmaresque, made their debut in the 1942 model year, production of which began in September 1941.  Just as stylists had drawn from earlier influences such as aeronautical streamlining and art deco architecture, Cadillac’s designers, although the US was not yet a belligerent in what was still a European war, picked up a motif from the military: the conical shape of the artillery shell, presumably to invoke the imagery of speed and power rather than destruction.  One quirk of the early dagmars was that after the US entered the war in December 1941, the government immediately imposed restrictions on the use of certain commodities for consumer goods and this affected chrome plating so the last of much of the the 1942 production runs left the factory with painted bumpers.  Automotive production for civilian sale in the US ceased on 22 February 1942, the  manufacturing capacity converted rapidly to war purposes.

1946 Cadillac.

Although the administration had allowed car production to continue until April, most of the output was used to create a stockpile of over half a million cars and light trucks, made available for the duration of the war to those deemed essential.  The sale of cars to private buyers was frozen from 31 December 1941 by Office of Production Management (OPM) although, upon application, local rationing boards could issue permits for cars to be delivered if the contract had been executed before 1 January.

By April 1944, only some thirty-thousand new cars remained in the stockpile and the manufacturers received authorization to undertake preliminary work on experimental models of civilian passenger cars with the proviso there must be no interference with war work and limits were imposed on the resources allocated.  At this stage, the invasion of mainland Europe had not happened and although progress on the atomic bomb was well-advanced, it was top-secret and not even tested so planning continued with the expectation conflict would continue into 1946 or even 1947.  The war instead ended in August 1945 and that month, Cadillac finished its last M-24 tank, the production lines reverting to cars as soon as September.  By the first week of October, car production was in full swing, the 1946 models essentially the 1942 range with a few detail differences.  The dagmars were retained and re-appeared also on the 1947 line.  Even by 1942 Americans had become accustomed to annual updates to the appearance of automobiles but such was the pent-up demand from the years of wartime restrictions that people in 1946-1947 queued to fill the order books for what were "new" versions of 1942 cars.  In the special circumstances of the time the approach worked in a way recycling for 2016 crooked Hillary Clinton's failed candidacy for the 2008 nomination didn't work for the Democratic party.

1948 Cadillac.

Smaller and more agile, Studebaker was the first manufacturer with a genuinely new post-war range and reaped the benefits although there was some resistance to the modernist lines which seemed then so radical.  GM was more conservative but nobody would mistake the 1948 Cadillacs for something earlier although while the bodies were new, the drive-train substantially was carried over.  Tail-fins weren’t entirely new to cars because the aviation influence had been seen pre-war but this was the model which began Detroit’s tail-fin fetish which, although starting modesty, would grow upwards (and occasionally outwards) for more than a decade.  Although inspired by the P-38 Lightning, the fins served no aerodynamic purpose, but unlike Mercedes-Benz’s later claim the fins on the 1959 Heckflosse were Peilstege (parking aids), Cadillac never bothered to suggest they were there to assist those reversing; at the front, a tribute to the Lockheed's twin propeller hubs seemed to compliment the fins.  The fins were mostly admired but the big news for 1949 was the new overhead valve (OHV) V8 which marked the start of a power race which would run for almost a quarter century before environmental concerns, safety issues and the first oil crisis (1973-1974) wrote finis for such things for a generation.

In a manner echoing pre-war practice, the new 331 cubic inch  (5.4 litre) V8 was actually smaller than its predecessor; that would not be the post-war trend and Cadillac’s V8s would grow to 500 cubic inches (8.2 litre) until reality bit in the 1970s and that reality did intrude on what was planned.  When Cadillac introduced their 331 V8 in 1949 it was designed with expansion in mind, able to be enlarged to around 430 cubic inches (7.0 litres), a displacement expected not ever to be required, such had been the advances in efficiency of internal combustion engines compared with pre-war units.  However, the American automobile became bigger & heavier while the highway network expanded, ushering in high-speed motoring, meaning the demand for more powerful engines grew too and by 1964, the Cadillac V8, then enlarged to 429 cubic inches (7.0 litres) had reached the end of its development potential and it was known both Chrysler and Ford would soon release V8s of even greater capacity.  Accordingly, in late 1967 they trumped the Chrysler 440 (7.2) and Ford's 462 (7.6) with the Cadillac 472 (7.7), a block designed to be able to grow to a remarkable 600-odd cubic inches (circa 10 litres), the precaution taken to ensure the corporation was ready for whatever market trends or regulatory impositions (fuel economy standards weren't envisaged in an era of "cheap, limitless oil") might emerge.  It was a shame because the Cadillac 429 was (by Detroit's seven litre standards) a compact and economical unit.  As things transpired, after growing in 1970 to 500 cubic inches, progressively the behemoth was down-sized to 425 (7.0) and 368 (6.0) before being retired in 1984 when it was the last of the US "big block" V8s still in passenger car use.  If Greta Thunberg (b 2003) thinks such things are bad now, she may be assured they used to be worse.  

1949 Ford "single spinner" (left) & 1951 Ford "twin spinner" (right).

The industry’s inspiration certainly came originally from the military, influenced either by artillery and aviation.  The first new Fords of the post-war years came to be known as “single spinners” and “twin spinners”, referencing the slang term for propeller and that use was a look back, jets, missiles & rockets providing designers with their new inspirations, language soon reflecting that.

"Dagmar", Virginia Ruth "Jennie" Lewis (née Egnor, 1921–2001).

Television was the great cultural disrupter of the post-war years, creating first a national and eventually an internationally shared experience unimaginable in the diverse media environment of the twenty-first century.  Television needed content and, beginning in 1949, some of it was provided by Dagmar.  Ms Lewis adopted the persona of the "dumb blonde" but soon proved to be no airhead, becoming the star of the show on which she'd been hired as the supporting act, parlaying her fame to become one of the celebrities of the era.  She was also impressively pneumatic which may have accounted for her popularity with at least some of the audience and the vague anatomical similarity to the Cadillac's chromed pieces quickly saw them nicknamed "dagmars".  She was said to be amused by the connection, exploiting it whenever possible and Harley Earl's notion of speeding explosive shells was soon forgotten.

Art and Engineering: The automobile, the sweater, the "bullet" or "torpedo" bras and the cross-over of techniques from the structural to the decorative; from jet aircraft & rockets to fashion, in the 1950s, the industry had no shortage of inspiration and role models.  Unfortunately, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) didn't live to see the dagmars sprout from cars and while it may be assumed he'd have thought them worthy of analysis, probably he'd have conceded "sometimes a bumper is just a bumper".

1951 Cadillac.

For 1951, the dagmars not only grew but evolved stylistically from their bolt-on beginnings to become visually integrated with the bumper itself although, technically, they remained separate parts.  The growth of the dagmar is illustrative of Charles Darwin's (1809-1882) theory of natural selection; beneficial mutations within the genetic code that aid an organism's survival will be passed to the next generation.  The sales performance of the brand in the post-war years would proved Darwin correct, the increasing bulk of Cadillacs rewarded on the sales charts and for much of Cadillac’s next twenty-five years, bigger would be better.  While the dagmars soon would reach an evolutionary dead-end and go extinct, for a (human) generation or more, size would continue to matter.

1953 Cadillac.

Whether or not Cadillac was influenced by the cultural impact of Ms Lewis isn’t documented but in one way the anthropomorphism became a little more explicit in 1953, this time with uplift, supported still by the bumper but notably higher.  However, for 1953, the dagmars also returned to their military roots with the addition of small stabilizer fins so those seeking meaning in the metal should make of that what they will.  It was in 1953 the Cadillac Eldorado first appeared as a low volume convertible, production prompted after the positive response to the 1952 El Dorado “Golden Anniversary” show car.  Lavishly equipped, it featured a unique body and is notable for the first appearance on a Cadillac of the “wrap-around” windscreen which would become an industry feature for almost a decade and one historian suggested the several days of incapacity suffered by Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) during the 1960 presidential campaign (his knee damaged by the “dog-leg” windscreen pillar in his Chevrolet) may have been a factor in him losing the contest by “an electoral eyelash”.  The 1953 Eldorado was very expensive and only 552 were built but despite that, in subsequent decades, US manufacturers often couldn't resist the lure of such unprofitable ventures, justified usually as "prestige projects".

1954 Cadillac.

Cadillac slightly enlarged the tails fins for 1954 but abandoned the little fins on the dagmars, the shape returning not merely to something approximating Ms Lewis but hinting also at the bullet bra style so associated with the era.  Why the dagmars dropped a cup size in 1954 isn't known but although it must at the time have seemed a good idea, the era's mantra of "never do in moderation what can be done in excess") soon prevailed.  It was clear there was demand for something like the Eldorado but the stratospheric price of the exclusively bodied 1953 car had meant buyers were few.  In 1954 Cadillac re-positioned the Eldorado as a blinged-up version of the regular-production line, enabling the price to be reduced by 35%; in response, sales almost quadrupled and almost immediately the thing was among the most profitable in the GM stable, something which encouraged over the years a number of “special edition” Eldorados with predictably fanciful names.

1955 Cadillac.

Peak dagmar was reached in 1955.  Although techniques in steel fabrication existed to allow them further to grow, imagining such things can conceive of them only as absurd and there's no evidence in the GM archives that anything bigger was contemplated; from now on, they would have to evolve in another way.  Such was the importance of the dagmar, to afford them additional space, the parking lamps were moved to a spot directly below the head lamps and 1955's uplift was quite explicit, the superstructure suggestive of the cantilever effect which underlay the structural engineering of the underwire bra.  Pursuing the metaphor, this was definitely up a couple of cup sizes from the year before; while it’s hard to be exact, by 1955 Cadillac was well into the alphabet.

1956 Cadillac.

Apparently now content with the shape of the protrusions, Cadillac may have realized that even by their standards the 1955 fittings may have been too big so slightly they were pruned and some attention was devoted instead to the surrounding details, the grill now with a finer texture and the parking lamps moved to lacunae cut into the bumpers.  A novelty for 1956 was the option of the grill being embellished in gold as an alternative to the standard satin finish and the fins, although higher than the originals, remained restrained.  That was not to last.

1955 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham Show car (left) and 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham (right).

Longer to lengthen the lingerie link, the uplifted dagmars now gained padding (which were technically more like pasties given they didn't increase a dagmar's size), the rubber attachments actually quite a good idea given how far their chromed metal predecessors stuck out.  Although obviously not at the time foreseen, the idea would be revived by some in the early 1970s as a quick, cheap solution to meet the new frontal-impact regulations and the rubber buffers must in 1957 have prevented some damage, both to victim and perpetrator.  Predictably, they were quickly nicknamed “pasties”, a borrowing of the term used in the female underwear business to describe a stick-on attachment designed for purposes of modesty.  The quad headlamps previewed on 1955 Eldorado Brougham Show car became lawful in many US states in 1957 (and soon all 48) and that meant the front end was becoming very busy with its array of circular shapes.

1958 Cadillac.

GM's corporate body for 1958 was released with the usually high expectations.  However, not only was the a brief, though sharp, recession which affected sales but the ranges suffered stylistically against the sleek new Chryslers which more than any embodied the "longer, lower, wider" motif which would characterize the era.  The Cadillacs were certainly longer in 1958, one aspect addressed in response to the perception the 1957 models had looked, remarkably, too short; a thing of relative proportions as well as absolute dimensions.  Still padded, the dagmars moved towards the edges and the fins grew, losing the forward slope on some models which had contributed to the sense of stubbiness.  What GM's designers looked at most longingly however were the Chrysler's sweeping tail-fins; they would respond.

1959 Cadillac.

Cadillac retired the dagmars for 1959; Darwinian natural selection again. (1) The dagmars, even if padded, did cause damage, both to themselves and whatever it was they hit (2) the adoption of the newly lawful quad headlamps in 1957-1958 created an opportunity for stylists render something new and (3) whatever may have be the linkage with women’s fashion, the old imagery of artillery shells or twin propellers was outmoded in the jet-age, the new inspiration being the twin-engined nacelle seen on the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress and the Convair B-36 Peacemaker, four of which Cadillac grafted on, two for the head lamps, two for the park lamps.  Even in Detroit in the 1950s, to add a pair of dagmars to that lot might have been thought a bit much.  As it was, probably few noticed or long lingered over their absence because it was the tail-fins and tail-lamps which drew the eye.

Translatable motifs: The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress and the 1959 Cadillac.

Built between 1952-1962, the B-52 has been in service under fourteen presidents and has seen several generations of airplanes come and go; when first it flew, Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) was nine, Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) was six and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) was five (though even then probably already lying about her age).  No longer used for its original purpose which was to overfly Russian & Chinese targets, dropping gravity bombs, the platform has proved adaptable and has been subject to a number of upgrades and revisions, new generations of engines (quieter, more economical and less polluting) fitted and some modern materials integrated to replace the some of the period steel & aluminium.  The most obvious updating however is that the B52s still in service are hybrids in that they're a mix of analogue and digital, the flight controls, weapons systems and other avionics reflecting in some cases almost all of the technical generations of the last sixty-odd years.  It’s not impossible some may still be in service in 2052, a century after the first flight.  In most ways, the B-52’s design has proved more durable than the 1952 Cadillac.

Translatable motifs: The Convair B-36 Peacemaker and the 1959 Cadillac.

The nacelles of aircraft engines provided Cadillac with a rich source of inspiration and if they couldn't decide between propellers and jets, some aircraft offered both.  The earliest of Messerschmitt's prototype twin-jet ME-262s were equipped also with a propeller driven by a Jumo 210 engine, a necessity for the test-pilots given the unreliability of the early jets and many manufactures adopted the approach for their prototypes.  For some aspects, Cadillac settled on on one which, unusually, combined both propulsion systems in a mass-produced model, the Convair B-36 Peacemaker (1946-1954) a transitional airframe which straddled the two eras which was one of the earliest strategic bombers designed specifically as a delivery system for nuclear weapons.  With a greater payload even than the B-52, in its final configuration the B-36 was powered by a remarkable ten engines, six radial propeller units and four jets which lent the B-36 its slogan within Strategic Air Command (SAC): "six turnin' and four burnin' ".  However, the propellers were in an unusual pusher configuration, facing the opposite direction from the usual practice so it would have been a challenge to continue the tribute to Ms Lewis.  Instead, for 1959 Cadillac "mixed and matched": the B-52's twin nacelles at the front, the B-36 lending its lines to the tail lamps at the rear.

Jayne Mansfield (1933-1967) in her 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarrritz.

She may neither have noticed nor cared that Cadillac deleted the dagmars on the 1959 range but Jayne Mansfield anyway brought her own when she bought a 1959 Eldorado convertible.  As a marketing ploy, the two-door hardtops had for some time been called the "Eldorado Seville" while the companion convertible was the "Eldorado Biarritz".  The dagmars may have gone but it's for the "twin bullet" tail-lamp assemblies that the 1959 range is remembered; while not the tallest fins on the era (the 1961 imperials winning that dubious award by about an inch (25 mm)), they probably were the most extravagant.  Also, despite the number of pink 1959 Cadillacs now in existence, none ever left the factory painted thus, a rose-colored exterior hue offered in only 1956.  It was that Elvis Presley (1935-1977) owned a pink Cadillac and the use of the phrase in popular culture (song & film) that made the trend a thing although his car was a 1955 Fleetwood Sixty Special which was originally blue with a black roof.  The roof was later re-sprayed white but people adopting the motif usually go all-pink.

1959 Cadillac Cyclone (XP-74) concept car (left) and North American F-86-50-NA Sabre (right).

However, although Cadillac abandoned the use of dagmars in their 1959 models (a rare example of restraint that year), just to remind people what they were missing, simultaneously they toured the show circuit with the Cadillac Cyclone (XP-74) concept car, an example of how far things had come from Ford's "spinners" a decade earlier.  Although it was powered by the corporation’s standard 390 cubic inch (6.5 litre) V8, there was some adventurous engineering including a rear-mounted automatic transaxle and independent rear suspension (using swing axles, something far from ideal but not as bad as it sounds given the grip of tyres at the time) but few dwelt long on such things, their attention grabbed by features such as the bubble top canopy (silver coated for UV protection) which opened automatically in conjunction with the electrically operated sliding doors.  This time the link with military aviation was quite explicit, the black dagmars actually functional radomes like those familiar on the F-86-D Sabre, containing the radar-controlled proximity sensors used electronically to alert the driver with an audible signal and warning light should an automobile or other approaching object be detected.  The system apparently worked although it would have been too expensive to offer as an option.  In 2024, such systems are produced by the million at low-cost and are standard equipment on many vehicles.

Trends in one industry do get picked up in others and it can be difficult to work out who is being influenced by whom, cause and effect sometimes amorphous.  Like the tailfin fad, the dagmar era came and went during the first generation of the affluent society, a brief, chromed moment during which excess could be enjoyed without guilt although, even at the time, there were critics although there were probably few dissenters among those who actually bought the big Cadillacs, Lincolns and Imperials.  Whether being in the avant-garde of dagmar trends much influenced buying patterns is doubtful because the Cadillac, Lincoln & Imperial crowd tended to be a tribal lot and conquest sales happened at scale only if some thing genuinely innovative (like the 1955 & 1957 Imperials) appeared and even then, Cadillac owners were seen as a breed apart; a separate population.  Only about one thing did probably most concur: everybody likes boobs.

Not only Cadillacs

1958 Lincoln Continental Mark III Convertible (left) and 1960 Lincoln Continental Mark V Executive Limousine.

Ford's 1958 Lincoln Continental was a reasonable technical achievement, being at the time the largest vehicle of unitary construction ever built and in convertible form it remains the longest the industry made since World War II (1939-1945).  It was also a failure in the market which went close to dooming the Lincoln brand and the reasons for that included the sheer size of the things (there were many garages, even in affluent places, in which where one simply wouldn't fit) and the appearance, a mashup of lines, curves and scallops which made some speculate each part may have been designed by a different committee, all working is isolation.  Ponderously, the body survived for three seasons during which Lincoln apparently couldn't decide about dagmars; after appearing in 1959, they were deleted the next year, only to return for the range's swansong in 1960.  Clearly, Lincoln lacked Cadillac's passion. 

The size did however come in handy when building limousines.  The black car was leased by Ford to the White House for an annual US$500 and was the one presidents used for personal journeys around Washington DC.  Replaced during Lyndon Johnson's (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) administration (1963-1969) as part of the periodic updating of the White House fleet, it was sold by public tender as just another used car and there wasn't then the same sensitivity attached to objects associated with events.  The 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible in which President John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was assassinated in 1963 was, after being repainted black (it was originally midnight blue), fitted with a permanent roof and titanium armor plating, returned to the White House car pool where it served until 1977, an unsentimental pragmatism probably unthinkable now.  Although their own extravagances were hardly subtle, the fins on Fords, Lincolns and even Edsels never reached the heights or bent to shape the contortions GM and Chrysler pumped out.  To their eternal credit, Lincoln didn't add dagmars to the memorable 1961 Lincoln; there would have been an absurd clash with the severe lines.

1963 Ford Galaxie 500XL convertible (G-Code 406 Tri-power).

Notably, GM's other divisions rarely tried to match Cadillac in the size, lift and projection of dagmars, Buick the most committed though other manufacturers, albeit spasmodically, would use the theme.  Mercury and Packard offered them on various models between 1953-1956 and Chevrolet's were modest and often rubber-padded.  That idea was picked up by Ford in the early 1960s, their final  A-cup fling on the 1963 Galaxie; perhaps as a sign of the times, uniquely, they were offered only as an optional extra.  In a distinctly un-dagmaresque way, a pair appeared also on the rear bumper and were obviously there genuinely to offer some modest protection against the damage which might be suffered in low-impact events such as those suffered in car parks.  The insurance industry had already noted the disproportionately large costs they were incurring fixing damage suffered while parking and were planning their own strategy.

Clockwise from top left: 1974 Jaguar XKE (E-Type), 1974 Triumph TR6, 1978 Triumph Spitfire and 1973 Dodge Monaco.

There was no suggestion of anything organically Darwinian about the sudden addition of ungainly blocks of rubber to certain US-market cars in the early 1970s.  They were a consequence of the lobbying efforts of the insurance industry proving more effective in having the congress pass legislation imposing "bumper standards" than were those of the car industry to delay or prevent their introduction.  Presumably also, the "campaign funds donations" of the insurance industry were both greater and better "packaged".  Some US manufacturers bolted them on as a stop-gap solution while the engineering was done to create the "railway-sleeper" bumpers to comply with the next year's tougher standards while some British sports cars would see out their final years so disfigured.  A few were built on platforms designed in the 1950s which either couldn’t be adapted or were so close to end-of-life the economics were not compelling.  The quick and dirty solution produced what proved to be distinctly non-anthropomorphic dagmars, this time made almost entirely of padding so predictably dubbed “falsies”.  Awkward looking though they were, worse was to come; some of the solutions used to meet the rules were truly ghastly, a few of which lasted well into the 1980s.

Sabrina, the English Dagmar

Television penetrated most of the Western world during the 1950s and in an era of generally (though not without the odd hiccup) rising prosperity, the sets became increasingly ubiquitous in domestic households.  The content however was much more regionally specific than would become the trend in succeeding decades.  While production centres in the UK did distribute some of their product elsewhere (and not only in the English-speaking world), by volume and cultural influence the US were by far the most successful, much of what was seen on many screens was locally produced, something easier to achieve in an era when 24 hour TV was not yet a thing and it was industry practice to repeat broadcasts with some frequency.  Additionally, there were often “local content” requirements (quotas) which were industry protection trade barriers erected obsessively to save viewers from what even then was understood as “cultural imperialism”.  Although that phrase had been used even prior to World War I (1914-1918), it wasn’t until it appeared in Mass Communications and American Empire (1969) by US sociologist Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) that it would become part of the mainstream language of critical theory.  However, not only was the particular phenomenon of American cultural influence well documented in the 1950s, it was also appreciated that television would be a force like no previous form of distribution, a concept Dr Schiller also discussed as “packaged consciousness”, an idea later refined as “encapsulated cultural hegemony”.

1962 Reliant Sabre (1961-1963): It was only the early cars which were adorned with the rather bizarre “sabrinas”.

But in the 1950s, more cultural references than now were regionally specific, although international trade (globalization had actually been well underway by before the World War I (1914-1918) and its aftermath of decades imposed an intermission) meant objects spread and in fields like architecture something like an “international style” had emerged.  So, the dagmars on the cars made it to Europe but, without Ms Lewis appearing of screens, the nickname didn’t come into use.  Except for Detroit’s cars, not many examples of the classic dagmar bumpers were seen but England did have Norma Ann Sykes (1936–2016), better known by her stage name: Sabrina.

Sabrina in some characteristic poses.

Sabrina’s early career was as a model, sometimes in various stages of undress, but it was when in 1955 she was cast as a stereotypical “dumb blonde” in a television series she achieved national fame.  On stage or screen, she remained a presence into the 1970s and although without great critical acclaim although the University of Leeds did confer an honorary D.Litt (Doctor of Letters) for services to the arts so there was that.  What was of course noticed was her "presence" and as well as the unusual fittings to the nose of the Reliant Sabre, the “sabrina” moniker was applied to parts of equipment on machinery as varied as heavy trucks and Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter jets.

Triumph sabrina engine in TRS, Le Mans, 1960.

There was also a “sabrina” engine, or more correctly its cylinder head.  For various reasons, it wasn’t easy for European manufacturers to pursue the path to power and performance by adopting the American approach of big displacement so they chose the alternative: greater specific efficiencies & higher engine speeds.  In Italy, as early as 1954 Alfa Romeo had proved the once exotic double overhead camshaft (DOHC) configuration was viable in relatively low-cost, mass-production machines and even in England, MG’s MGA Twin Cam had been released, short-lived though it was.  Triumph’s sports cars had enjoyed much success, both in the marketplace and on racetracks but their engines were based on one used in a tractor and while legendary robust, it was tuneable only up to a point and that point had been reached, limiting its potential in competition.  The solution was a DOHC head atop the old tractor mill and this the factory prepared for their racing team to run in the 1959 Le Mans 24 Hour classic, naming the car in which it was installed the TR3S, suggesting some very close relationship with the road-going TR3 although it really was a prototype and a genuine racing car.

The Le Mans campaigns with the sabrina Engine: TR3S (1959, left), TRS (1960, centre) and the TRS team crossing the line in formation for what was a "staged  photo-opportunity", none of the cars having completed the requisite number of laps to be classified a "finisher" (1960, right).  In 1961, all three went the distance, taking the "Teams Prize".    

Some resemblance in the mind's eye of an engineer: Sectional view of the sabrina.

Triumph used the sabrina engine for three consecutive years at Le Mans, encountering some problems but the reward was delivered in 1961 when all three cars completed the event with one finishing a creditable ninth, the trio winning that year’s team prize.  Satisfied the engine was now a reliable power-plant, the factory did flirt with the idea of offering it as an option in the TR sports cars but, because the differences between it and the standard engine were so great, it was decided the high cost of tooling up for mass production was unlikely to be justified, the projected sales volumes just not enough to amortize the investment.  Additionally, although much power was gained by adding the DOHC Hemi head, the characteristics of its delivery were really suited only to somewhere like Le Mans which is hardly typical of race circuits, let alone the conditions drivers encounter on the road.  As a footnote in Triumph’s history, it was the second occasion on which the factory had produced a DOHC engine which had failed to reach production.  In 1934 the company displayed a range-topping version of their Dolomite sports car (1934-1940), powered by a supercharged two litre (121 cubic inch), DOHC straight-8.  The specification was intoxicating and the lines rakish but, listed at more than ten times the price of a small family car, it was too ambitious for the troubled economy of the 1930s and only three were built.

Professor Regitz-Zagrosek's "bikini triangle": Lindsay Lohan illustrates.

When viewing the casing containing the gears and timing chains running from the bottom-end to the front camshaft bearings, one can see why Sabrina rapidly would have entered the mind of an engineer.  Apparently it began with a chance remark at the assembly bench but nobody could think of a more appropriate description so the official project name it became, the original "20X" soon forgotten.  Anatomically, the engineers were of course about right because the front sectional view of the sabrina engine’s internals do align with what Dr Vera Regitz-Zagrosek (b 1953; Professor of Cardiology at the University of Zurich), describes as “the bikini triangle”, that area of the female human body defined by a line between the breasts and from each breast down to the reproductive organs; it’s in this space that is found all the most obvious anatomical differences between male & female although the professor does caution that differences actually exist throughout the body, down to the cellular level.

Bug

Bug (pronounced buhg)

(1) Any insect of the order Hemiptera, especially any of the suborder Heteroptera (a hemipteran or hemipteron; a hemipterous insect), having piercing and sucking mouthparts specialized as a beak (rostrum) and known loosely as the “true bug”.

(2) Any of various species of marine or freshwater crustaceans.

(3) In casual use, any insect or insect-like invertebrate (ie used often of spiders and such because of their supposed “bug-like” quality).

(4) In casual use, any micro-organism causing disease, applied especially to especially a virus or bacterium.

(5) An instance of a disease caused by such a micro-organism; a class of such conditions.

(6) In casual (and sometimes structured) use, a defect or imperfection, most associated with computers but applied also to many mechanical devices or processes.

(7) A craze or obsession (usually widespread or of long-standing).

(8) In slang, a person who has a great enthusiasm for such a craze or obsession (often as “one bitten by the bug”).

(9) In casual (and sometimes structured) use, a hidden microphone, camera or other electronic eavesdropping device (a clipping of bugging device) and used analogously of the small and effectively invisible (often a single-pixel image) image on a web page, installed usually for the purpose of tracking users.

(10) Any of various small mechanical or electrical gadgets, as one to influence a gambling device, give warning of an intruder, or indicate location.

(11) A mark, as an asterisk, that indicates a particular item, level, etc.

(12) In US horse racing, the five-pound (2¼ kg) weight allowance able to be claimed by an apprentice jockey and by extension (1) the asterisk used to denote an apprentice jockey's weight allowance & (2) in slang, US, a young apprentice jockey (sometimes as “bug boy” (apparently used thus also of young female jockeys, “bug girl” seemingly beyond the pale.)).

(13) A telegraph key that automatically transmits a series of dots when moved to one side and one dash when moved to the other.

(14) In the slang of poker, a joker which may be used only as an ace or as a wild card to fill a straight or a flush.

(15) In commercial printing, as “union bug”, a small label printed on certain matter to indicate it was produced by a unionized shop.

(16) In fishing, a any of various plugs resembling an insect.

(17) In slang, a clipping of bedbug (mostly UK).

(18) A bogy; hobgoblin (extinct).

(19) In slang, as “bug-eyed”, protruding eyes (the medical condition exophthalmos).

(20) A slang term for the Volkswagen Beetle (Type 1; 1938-2003 & the two retro takes; 1997-2019).

(21) In broadcasting, a small (often transparent or translucent) image placed in a corner of a television program identifying the broadcasting network or channel.

(22) In aviation, a manually positioned marker in flight instruments.

(23) In gay (male) slang in the 1980s & 1990s as “the bug”, HIV/AIDS.

(24) In the slang of paleontology, a trilobite.

(25) In gambling slang, a small piece of metal used in a slot machine to block certain winning combinations.

(26) In gambling slang, a metal clip attached to the underside of a table, etc and used to hold hidden cards (a type of cheating).

(27) As the Bug (or Western Bug), a river in Eastern Europe flows through Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine with a total length of 481 miles (774 km).  The Southern Bug (530 miles (850 km)) in south west Ukraine flows into the Dnieper estuary and is some 530 miles (850 km) long.

(28) A past tense and past participle of big (obsolete).

(29) As ISO (international standard) 639-2 & ISO 639-3, the language codes for Buginese.

(30) To install a secret listening device in a room, building etc or on a telephone or other communications device.

(31) To badger, harass, bother, annoy or pester someone.

1615–1625: The original use was to describe insects, apparently as a variant of the earlier bugge (beetle), thought to be an alteration of the Middle English budde, from the Old English -budda (beetle) but etymologists are divided on whether the phrase “bug off” (please leave) is related to the undesired presence of insects or was of a distinct origin.  Bug, bugging & debug are nouns & verbs, bugged is a verb & adjective and buggy is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is bugs.  Although “unbug” makes structural sense (ie remove a bug, as opposed to the sense of “debug”), it doesn’t exist whereas forms such as the adjectives unbugged (not bugged) and unbuggable (not able to be bugged) are regarded as standard.

The array of compound forms meaning “someone obsessed with an idea, hobby etc) produced things like “shutterbug” (amateur photographer) & firebug (arsonist) seems first to have emerged in the mid nineteenth century.  The development of this into “a craze or obsession” is thought rapidly to have accelerated in the years just before World War I (1914-1918), again based on the notion of “bitten by the bug” or “caught the bug”, thus the idea of being infected with an unusual enthusiasm for something.  The use to mean a demon, evil spirit, spectre or hobgoblin was first recorded in the mid-fourteenth century and was a clipping of the Middle English bugge (scarecrow, demon, hobgoblin) or uncertain origin although it may have come from the Middle Welsh bwg (ghost; goblin (and linked to the Welsh bwgwl (threat (and earlier “fear”) and the Middle Irish bocanách (supernatural being).  There’s also speculation it may have come from the scary tales told to children which included the idea of a bugge (beetle) at a gigantic scale.  That would have been a fearsome sight and the idea remains fruitful to this day for artists and film-makers needing something frightening in the horror or SF (science fiction) genre.  The use in this sense is long obsolete although the related forms bugbear and bugaboo survive.  Dating from the 1570s, a bugbear was in folklore a kind of “large goblin”, used to inspire fear in children (both as a literary device & for purposes of parental control) and for adults it soon came to mean “a source of dread, resentment or irritation; in modern use it's an “ongoing problem”, a recurring obstacle or adversity or one’s pet peeve.  The obsolete form bugg dates from circa 1620s and was a reference to the troublesome bedbug, the construct a conflation of the middle English bugge (scarecrow, hobgoblin) and the Middle English budde (beetle).  The colloquial sense of “a microbe or germ” dates from 1919, the emergence linked to the misleadingly-named “Spanish flu” pandemic.

Like the rest of us, even scientists, entomologists and zoologists generally probably say “bug” in general conversation, whether about the insects or the viruses and such which cause disease but in writing academic papers they’ll take care to be more precise.  Because to most of us “bugs” can be any of the small, creepy pests which intrude on our lives (some of which are actually helpful in that quietly and unobtrusively they dispose of the really annoying bugs which bite us), the word is casually and interchangeably applied to bees, ants, bees, millipedes, beetles, spiders and anything else resembling an insect.  That use may be reinforced by the idea of the thing “bugging” us by their very presence.  To the professionals however, insects are those organisms in the classification Insecta, a very large class of animals, the members of which have a three-part body, six legs and (usually) two pairs of wings whereas a bug is a member of the order Hemiptera (which in the taxonomic system is within the Insecta class) and includes cicadas, aphids and stink bugs; to emphasize the point, scientists often speak of those in the order Hemiptera as “true bugs”.  The true bugs are those insects with mouthparts adapted for piercing and sucking, contained usually in a beak-shaped structure, a vision agonizingly familiar to anyone who has suffered the company of bedbugs.  That’s why lice are bugs and cockroaches are not but the latter will continue to be called bugs, often with some preceding expletive.

9 September 1947: The engineer's note (with physical evidence) of electronic computing's "first bug".

In computing, where the term “bug” came to be used to describe “glitches, crashes” and such, it has evolved to apply almost exclusively to software issues and even if events are caused by hardware flaws, unless it’s something obvious (small explosions, flame & smoke etc) most users probably assume a fault in some software layer.  The very first documented bug however was an interaction recorded on 9 September 1947 between the natural world and hardware, an engineer’s examination of an early (large) computer revealing an insect had sacrificially landed on one of the circuits, shorting it out and shutting-down the machine.  As proof, the unfortunate moth was taped to the report.  On a larger scale (zoologically rather than the hardware), the problem of small rodents such as mice entering the internals of printers, there to die from various causes (impact injuries, starvation, heat et al) remains not uncommon, resulting sometimes in mechanical damage, sometimes just the implications of decaying flesh.

The idea of a bug as a “defect, flaw, fault or glitch” in a mechanical or electrical device was first recorded in the late 1800s as engineer’s slang, the assumption being they wished to convey the idea of “a small fault” (and thus easily fixed, as opposed to some fundamental mistake which would necessitate a re-design).  Some sources suggest the origin lies with Thomas Edison (1847-1931) who is reported as describing the consequences of an insect “getting into the works”.  Programmers deploy an array of adjectives to "bug" (major, minor, serious, critical & non-critical et al) although between themselves (and certainly when disparaging of the code of others) the most commonly heard phrase is probably “stupid bug”.  The “debugging” (also as de-bugging) process is something with a wide definition but in general it refers to any action or set of actions taken to remove errors.  The name of the debug.exe (originally debug.com) program included with a number of (almost all 16 & 32-bit) operating systems was a little misleading because in addition to fixing things, it could be used for other purposes and is fondly remembered by those who wrote Q&D (quick & dirty) work-arounds which, written in assembler, ran very fast.  The verb debug was first used in 1945 in the sense of “remove the faults from a machine” and by 1964 it appeared in field service manuals documenting the steps to be taken to “remove a concealed microphone”.  Although the origin of the use of “bug” in computing (probably the now most commonly used context) can be traced to 1947, the term wasn’t widely used beyond universities, industry and government sites before the 1960s when the public first began to interact at scale with the implications (including the bugs) of those institutions using computerized processes.  Software (or any machinery) badly afflicted by bugs can be called “buggy”, a re-purposing of the use of an adjective dating from 1714 meaning “a place infested with bugs”.

Some bugs gained notoriety.  In the late 1990s, it wasn’t uncommon for the press to refer to the potential problems of computer code using a two-numeral syntax for years as the “Y2K bug” which was an indication of how wide was the vista of the common understanding of "bug" and one quite reasonable because that was how the consequences would be understood.  A massive testing & rectification effort was undertaken by the industry (and corporations, induced by legislation and the fear of litigation) and with the coming of 1 January 2000 almost nothing strange happened and that may also have been the case had nothing been done but, on the basis of the precautionary principle, it was the right approach.  Of course switching protocols to use four-numeral years did nothing about the Y10K bug but a (possible) problem 8000 years hence would have been of little interest to politicians or corporate boards.  Actually, YxK bugs will re-occur (with decreasing frequency) whenever a digit needs to be added.  The obvious solution is trailing zeros although if one thinks in terms of infinity, it may be that, in the narrow technical sense, such a solution would just create an additional problem although perhaps one of no practical significance.  Because of the way programmers exploit the way computers work, there have since the 1950s been other date (“time” to a computer) related “bugs” and management of these and the minor problems caused has been handled well.  Within the industry the feeling is things like the “year 2029 problem” and “year 2038 problem” will, for most of the planet, be similarly uneventful.

The DOSShell, introduced with PC-DOS 4.0; this was as graphical as DOS got.  The DOSShell was bug-free.

Bugs can also become quirky industry footnotes.  As late as 1987, IBM had intended to release the update of PC-DOS 3.3 as version 3.4, reflecting the corporation’s roadmap of DOS as something of an evolutionary dead-end, doomed ultimately to end up in washing machine controllers and such while the consumer and corporate market would shift to OS/2, the new operating system which offered pre-emptive multi-tasking and access to bigger storage and memory addressing.  However, at that point, both DOS & OS/2 were being co-developed by IBM & Microsoft and agreement was reached to release a version 4 of DOS.  DOS 4 also included a way of accessing larger storage space (through a work-around with a program called share.exe) and more memory (in a way less elegant than the OS/2 approach but it did work, albeit more slowly), both things of great interest to Microsoft because they would increase the appeal of its upcoming Windows 3.0, a graphical shell which ran on top of DOS; unlike OS/2, Windows was exclusive to Microsoft and so was the revenue stream.  Unfortunately, it transpired the memory tricks used by PC-DOS 4.0 were “buggy” when used with some non-IBM hardware and the OS gained a bad reputation from which it would never recover.  By the time the code was fixed, Microsoft was ready to release its own version as MS-DOS 4.0 but, noting all the bad publicity, after a minor updates and some cosmetic revisions, the mainstream release was MS-DOS 4.01.  In the code of the earlier bug-afflicted bits, there is apparently no difference between MS-DOS 4.01 the few existing copies of MS-DOS 4.0.

Lindsay Lohan with Herbie the "Love Bug", Herbie: Fully Loaded (Disney Pictures, 2005). 

In idiomatic and other uses, bug has a long history.  By the early twentieth century “bugs” meant “mad; crazy" and by then “bug juice” had been in use for some thirty years, meaning both “propensity of the use of alcoholic drink to induce bad behaviour” and “bad whiskey” (in the sense of a product being of such dubious quality it was effectively a poison).  A slang dictionary from 1811 listed “bug-hunter” as “an upholsterer”, an allusion to the fondness bugs and other small creatures show for sheltering in the dark, concealed parts of furniture.  As early as the 1560s, a “bug-word” was a word or phrase which “irritated or vexed”.  The idea of “bug-eyed” was in use by the early 1870s and that’s thought either to be a humorous mispronunciation of bulge or (as is thought more likely) an allusion to the prominent, protruding eyes of creatures like frogs, the idea being they sat on the body like “a pair of bugs”.  The look became so common in the movies featuring aliens from space that by the early 1950s the acronym BEM (bug-eyed monster) had become part of industry slang.  The correct term for the medical condition of "bulging eyes" is exophthalmos.

To “bug someone” in the sense of “to annoy or irritate” seems not to have been recorded until 1949 and while some suggest the origin of that was in swing music slang, it remains obscure.  The now rare use of “bug off” to mean “to scram, to skedaddle” is documented since 1956 and is of uncertain origin but may be linked to the Korean War (1950-1953) era US Army slang meaning “stage a precipitous retreat”, first used during a military reversal.  The ultimate source was likely the UK, Australian & New Zealand slang “bugger off” (please leave).  The “doodle-bug” was first described in 1865 and was Southern US dialect for a type of beetle.  In 1944, the popular slang for the German Vergeltungswaffen eins (the V-1 (reprisal weapon 1) which was the first cruise missile) was “flying bomb” or “buzz bomb”) but the Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots preferred “doodle-bug”.

The ultimate door-stop for aircraft hangers: Bond Bug 700.

The popularity of three wheeler cars in the UK during the post-war years was a product of cost breakdown.  They were taxed at a much lower rate than conventional four-wheel vehicles, were small and thus economical and could be operated by anyone with only a motorcycle licence.  Most were actually genuine four-seaters and thus an attractive alternative for families and, being purely utilitarian, there were few attempts to introduce elements of style.  The Bond Bug (1970-1974) was an exception in that it was designed to appeal to the youth market with a sporty-looking two-seater using the then popular “wedge-styling” and in its most powerful form it could touch 80 mph (130 km/h), faster than any other three wheeler available.  However, the UK in 1973 introduced a value-added tax (VAT) and this removed many of the financial advantages the three-wheelers.  In an era of rising prosperity, the appeal of the compromise waned and coupled with some problems in the early productions runs, in 1974, after some 2¼ thousand Bugs had been built, the zany little machine was dropped; not even the oil crisis of the time (which had doomed a good number of bigger, thirstier cars) could save it.  Even in its best years it was never all that successful, essentially because it was really a novelty and there were “real” cars available for less money.  Still, the survivors have a following in their niche at the lower end of the collector market.

The business of spying is said to be the “second oldest profession” and even if not literally true, few doubt the synergistic callings of espionage and war are among man’s earliest and most enduring endeavors.  Although the use of “bug” to mean “equip with a concealed microphone” seems not to have been in use until 1946, bugging devices probably go back thousands of years (in a low-tech sort of way) and those known to have been used in Tudor-era England (1485-1603) are representative of the way available stuff was adapted, the most popular being tubular structures which, if pressed against a thin wall (or preferably a door’s keyhole) enabled one to listen to what was being discussed in a closed room.  Bugging began to assume its modern form when messages began to be transmitted over copper wires which could stretch for thousands of miles and the early term for a “phone bug” was “phone tap”, based upon the idea of “tapping into” the line as one might a water pipe.  Bugs (the name picked-up because many of the early devices were small, black and “bug-like”), whether as concealed microphones or phone taps, swiftly became part of the espionage inventory in diplomacy, commerce and crime and as technology evolved, so did the bugging techniques.

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr (1902–1985), US Ambassador to the UN (United Nations) at a May 1960 session of the Security Council, using the Great Seal bug to illustrate the extent of Soviet bugging.  The context was a tu quoque squabble between the Cold War protagonists, following Soviet revelations about the flight-paths of the American's U2 spy planes.  Lodge would be Richard Nixon’s (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) running mate in that year's presidential election.     

A classic bug of High Cold War was the Great Seal bug, (known to the security services as the thing), a Soviet designed and built concealed listening device which was so effective because it used passive transmission protocols for its audio signal, thereby rendering it invisible to conventional “bug-detection” techniques.  The bug was concealed inside large, carved wooden rendition of the US Great Seal which, in 1945, the Kremlin presented as a “gift of friendship” to the US Ambassador to the USSR Averell Harriman (1891-1986); in a nice touch, it was a group of Russian school children who handed over the carving.  Sitting in the ambassador’s Moscow office for some seven years, it was a masterpiece of its time because (1) being activated only when exposed to a low-energy radio signal which Soviet spies would transmit from outside, when subjected to a US “bug detection” it would appear to be a piece of wood and (2) as it needed no form of battery or other power supply (and indeed, no maintenance at all), its lifespan was indefinite.  Had it not by chance been discovered by a communications officer at the nearby British embassy who happened to be tuned to the same frequency while the Soviets were sending their signal, it may well have remained in place for decades.  Essentially, the principles of the Great Seal bug were those used in modern radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems.