highball

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated Sun, 3 Mar 2002  4:07:47 PM Eastern Standard Time, Gerald Cohen <gcohen at UMR.EDU> writes:

>     Whoever invented the drink-term "highball" might have first heard
> this term somewhere else (railroad? poker? carnies?) and then applied
> the non-alcoholic term to the drink due the high glass it was served
> in.

A couple of Web pages say that the drink got its name because it was a favorite drink of railroad workers (one even makes the preposterous claim that the railroad signal was named after the drink).  I have seen no evidence that railroaders drank this particular drink, but it is a plausible suggestion:  "highball" = "full speed ahead" suggesting "full speed ahead to the bar" etc.

Another possibility, rather far-fetched: "highball" to railroaders originally meant an actual ball hoisted "high" on a tower, but became transferred to a hand signal that also meant "you may proceed at full speed".  Perhaps railroaders brought this hand signal into their gandy bars...

URL http://www.pnwc-nrhs.org/trainmaster/1990/tm-1997-08.html quotes (or perhaps paraphrases) a press release from the Union Pacific Railroad, dated July 31, 1997 (my annotations in [brackets]):

<begin quote>
In describing the CAD [computer aided dispatching] III system as a quantum leap in technology, [Union Pacific Railroad President Jerry] Davis compared it to the advances made in train dispatching, beginning with the 1860s "highball" signal system to the 1930s Centralized Traffic Control (CTC), which allowed remote control of track signals and switches, to the first generation of computer aided dispatching in the 1980s.
<end quote>

I'll keep looking for a more solid antedating.

      - Jim Landau