Cloud Eight & Cloud Nine

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 08/25/2002 9:08:16 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Bapopik at AOL.COM writes:

>     26 October 1930, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. XX6 headline:
>     The flying cloud is now an eight.
>
>     9 August 1931, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 106 headline:
>     The news from Detroit: REO's new flying cloud eight.

The second one probably means that the REO (or is it the Reo?) automobile now
has an eight-cylinder engine.  It would make sense if Reo had a model called
the "Flying Cloud" (wasn't there a "Silver Cloud" model of the Rolls Royce?)
but in that case wouldn't the term "flying cloud" be capitalized?

As for "cloud 9", I remember reading (I think it was in Tom McCahill's column
in Mechanix Illustrated) that at one time some Detroit company had come out
with a nine-cylinder engine.  Supposedly a nine-cylinder ran smoother than an
eight-cylinder because the eight always had pairs of cylinders banging at the
same time and the nine did not.  If a nine sounds strange, consider that a
common design of aircraft engines was (and still is) to have 14 cylinders.


      - James A. Landau
        systems engineer
        FAA Technical Center (ACB-510/BCI)
        Atlantic City Int'l Airport NJ 08405 USA