Chandler began working on The Big Sleep in the spring of 1938. The writing progressed quickly, taking only three months--a pace he would never again be able to match. The plot is drawn from two of his short stories, "Killer in the Rain" and "The Curtain" and incorporates small pieces of "Finger Man." Although he called the process "cannibalization," Chandler did not cut and paste passages but rather rewrote entire scenes, in the process tightening his prose and enriching his descriptions.
The improvement can be seen comparing the opening paragraphs of the novel's Chapter 3 with the original version in "The Curtain", both of which describe Vivian Regan/O'Mara's bedroom:
from "The Curtain"
The room had a white carpet from wall to wall. Ivory drapes of immense height lay tumbled casually on the white carpet inside many windows. The windows stared toward the dark foothills, and the air beyond the glass was dark too. It hadn't started to rain yet, but there was a feeling of pressure in the atmosphere.
from The Big Sleep
The room was too big, the ceiling was too high, the doors were too tall, and the white carpet that went from wall to wall looked like a fresh fall of snow at Lake Arrowhead. There were full-length mirrors and crystal doodads all over the place. The ivory furniture had chromium on it, and the enormous ivory drapes lay tumbled on the white carpet a yard from the window. The white made the ivory look dirty and the ivory made the white look bled out. The windows stared toward the darkening foothills. It was going to rain soon. There was pressure in the air already.
The second version pays closer attention to specific details, and it illustrates how Chandler's style had developed. The paragraph from "The Curtain" is objective, giving the facts of how the room looked and the air felt--a style that shows Chandler's debt to Dashiell Hammett and Ernest Hemingway. In The Big Sleep version of the paragraph, though, this obective viewpoint has softened somewhat, allowing the narrator's judgements to color the description. Note, for example, the repetition in "too big . . . too high . . . too tall" and loaded words such as "doodads." Marlowe views Vivian Regan's room as overly lavish and decorated to the point of seeming decadent and stripped of life. This viewpoint is expressed not didactically but through carefully-controlled description. It shows Chandler's style at its maturity.
Turboencabulator
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Turboencabulator or turbo-encabulator is a fictional machine whose alleged existence became part of an in-joke and a professional humor amongst electrical engineers.
The widely circulated piece on the mythical "turbo-encabulator" was written by Bernard Salwen, a New York lawyer working in Washington, DC during World War II. Part of Salwen's job was to review technical manuscripts. Having a sharp ear for words, he was bemused by the jargon and came up with this classic piece. The myth was that it was excerpted in a short article in Time magazine on April 15, 1946: [1]
Engineers last week were avidly reading a pamphlet published by Arthur D. Little, Inc., a venerable Cambridge, Mass, chemical and engineering research firm. Title: The Turbo-Encabulator in Industry. Excerpts: " ... Work has been proceeding in order to bring perfection to the crudely conceived idea of a machine that would not only supply inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase detractors, but would also be capable of automatically synchronizing cardinal grammeters. Such a machine is the 'Turbo-Encabulator'. "The original machine had a base-plate of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two spurving bearings were in a direct line with the pentametric fan. ... The main winding was of the normal lotus-o-delta type placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a nonreversible trem'e pipe to the differential girdlespring on the 'up' end of the grammeters. "Forty-one manestically spaced grouting brushes were arranged to feed into the rotor slipstream a mixture of high S-value phenylhydrobenzamine and 5% reminative tetryliodohexamine. Both of these liquids have specific pericosities given by P = 2.5C.n^6-7 where n is the diathetical evolute of retrograde temperature phase disposition and C is Cholmondeley's annular grillage coefficient. Initially, n was measured with the aid of a metapolar refractive pilfrometer . . . but up to the present date nothing has been found to equal the transcendental hopper dadoscope. ... "Undoubtedly, the turbo-encabulator has now reached a very high level of technical development. It has been successfully used for operating nofer trunnions. In addition, whenever a barescent skor motion is required, it may be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocating dingle arm to reduce sinusoidal depleneration."
The turboencabulator was supposedly described by a "J.H. Quick" in "The Institution of Electrical Engineers, Students Quarterly Journal" 25 (London), p184 in 1955 [1]. (Other sources give vol 15 no. 58 p. 22, December 1944.) Most of the terms in the description were made up, but technical sounding, to fool the unknowing. The device was said to measure "Inverse Reactive Current". This type of joke among engineers actually dates further back than this, such as the Laplace transformer (a play on the Laplace transform).
A data sheet for a turboencabulator was published in General Electric's 1962/1963 product catalog [2]. It is claimed to have been a prank, the nature of which GE management learned after receiving inquiries about the advertised product; or it could be a spoof.
The Turbo-Encabulator is a fictional device purportedly manufactured by the former Chrysler Corporation (circa aprox. 1988-'90), or, later, by Rockwell Automation, renamed Retro-Encabulator, according to video clips that have been circulating on the Internet. The video has become popular with engineers due to its humorous use of technobabble. The 'Encabulator implements the "crudely conceived idea" of generating "inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase detractors" and "automatically synchronizing cardinal grammeters".
The description of the device, which uses made-up, technical-sounding terms, as well as meaningless strings of engineering jargon, makes it clear to engineer viewers that this is not a real device. Nevertheless, Rockwell Automation does exist, Chrysler survives as a unit of DaimlerChrysler and most of the brands mentioned (in the case of the Rockwell video, brands or subsidiaries of Rockwell Automation) in the video are accurately described. Allen-Bradley manufactures controls. Dodge Power Transmission manufactures gears and bearings. Reliance Electric manufactures motors, and Rockwell Software is a division of Rockwell Automation. The equipment shown in the original Chrysler video (link below) is a real Chysler FWD transaxle and diagnostic equipment, and the newer (Rockwell) video depicts real equipment that can be ordered from Allen-Bradley (as individual parts, however), including the motor control center (MCC) that is being described as the retro-encabulator. The Chrysler video also delves into actual diagnostics, showing real Chrysler dealership test equipment, circa the late 1980s.
Most generators operate by the "relative motion of conductors and fluxes". On the other hand, the Retro-Encabulator uses the "modial interaction of magneto-reluctance and capacitive directance". As plausible as this may sound to non-engineers, "modial" and "directance" are not even words, much less meaningful engineering terms. Some of the other parts mentioned in the video, (e.g. "differential girdle spring" and "dingle arm") help signal even the technically non-proficient that it is a joke.
[edit] References
1. ^ turboencabulator.txt
2. ^ A pdf of the copy of two pages from the GE catalog
* A slightly better scan of reference the GE data sheet is available here: [2]
[edit] Usage
* Time (magazine); May 6, 1946; An adjunct to the turbo-encabulator, employed whenever a barescent skor motion is required.
* Time (magazine); June 3, 1946; If the sackful of mail we have received from you is any indication, the story of "The Turbo-Encabulator in Industry" struck many a responsive chord. Aside from those of you who wanted to be reassured that TIME hadn't been taken in, we received the customary complaints about using too much technical jargon for the layman, observations such as "My husband says it sounds like a new motor; I say it sounds like a dictionary that has been struck by lightning"; suggestions that it "might have come out of the mouth of Danny Kaye," and plaintive queries like: "Is this good?" Wrote one bemused U.S. Navyman: "It'sh poshible." To some the turbo-encabulator sounded as though it would be a "wonderful machine for changing baby's diapers." A reader from Hoboken assumed that it would be on sale soon in Manhattan department stores. Many of you wrote in to thank us for illuminating what you have long wanted to tell your scientist friends.
* The Coe College Cosmos; May 23, 1951, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; "Now I have a brand new turboencabulator with the ... we hope that Jasper ... hasn't scared away all the little tots from future operettas. Seems that he had ..."
[edit] External links
* The complete Chrysler video, circa ~1988-1990 on YouTube
* Complete Rockwell video on Google Video
* The Turbo-encabulator in Industry
* Retroencabulator website (contains Turbo-Encabulator text with "Turbo" replaced by "Retro"; does not contain the text from the Retro-Encabulator video)
Retrieved from "
Categories: Professional humor |
Retroencabulator
For a number of years now, work has has been proceeding in order to bring prefection to the crudely conceived idea of a machine that would work to not only supply inverse reactive current, for use in unilateral phase detectors, but would also be capable of automatically synchronising cardinal grammeters. Such a machine is the 'Retroencabulator'. Basically, the only new principle involved is that instead of the power being generated by the relaxive motion of conductors and fluxes, it is produced by the modial interactions of magneto- reluctance and capacitive directance.
The original machine had a base-plate of prefabulated amulite, surrounded by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two spurving bearings were in direct line with the pentametric fan, the latter consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzelvanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar vaneshaft that side fumbling was effectively prevented. The main winding was of the normal lotus- o-delta type placed in panendermic semiboloid solts in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a non-reversible termic pipe to the differential girdlespring on the 'up' end of the grammeter.
Forty-one manestically placed grouting brushes were arrranged to feed into the rotor slip stream a mixture of high S-value phenyhydrobenzamine and 5 percent reminative tetraiodohexamine. Both these liquids have specific pericosities given by p=2.4 Cn where n is the diathecial evolute of retrograde temperature phase disposition and C is the Chomondeley's annual grillage coefficient. Initially, n was measured with the aid of a metapolar pilfrometer, but up to the present date nothing has been found to equal the transcetental hopper dadoscope.
Electrical engineers will appreciate the difficulty of nubbing together a regurgitative purwell and a superaminative wennel-sprocket. Indeed, this proved to be a stumbling block to further development until, in 1943, it was found that the use of anhydrous nagling pins enabled a kyptonastic boiling shim to be tankered.
The early attempts to construct a sufficiently robust spiral decommutator failed largely because of lack of appreciation of the large quasi-pietic stresses in the gremlin studs; the latter were specially designed to hold the roffit bars to the spamshaft. When, however, it was discovered that wending could be prevented by the simple addition of teeth to socket, almost perfect running was secured.
The operating point is maintained as near as possible to the HF rem peak by constantly fromaging the bituminous spandrels. This is a distinct advance on the standard nivelsheave in that no drammock oil is required after the phase detractors have remissed.
Undoubtedly, the Retroencabulator has now reached a very high level of technical development. It has been successfully used for operating nofer trunnions. In addition, whenever a barescent skor motion is required, it may be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocating dingle arm to reduce sinusoidal depleneration.