countdown was: "As If"

[Laurence Horn]

>I've heard, but have no documentation for, that the idea of a
>"countdown" for a missile/rocket launch was an invention of the Germans
>at Peenemuende (where the V-2 rocket was developed), and when they came
>to America after the war, to support V-2 launches at Ft. Bliss
>(1946-1950), and then here to Huntsville for the development of Army and
>NASA rockets, they brought countdowns with them.  So the term could show
>up in US technical documents as early as 1946 or so.
>
>Contemporary accounts of the Manhattan Project show that a countdown was
>used at the Trinity test, but I can't find the word "countdown" in any
>contemporary accounts online.
>
>Robert Heinlein's 1952 novel "The Rolling Stones" calls it a "count
>off":
>
>      "She answered, "Board green!  Clear from tower! Ready for count
>off!"
>      "Minus thirty! Twenty-nine -- twenty-eight --" He broke off and
>added sheepishly, "It does feel good." "
>[from Amazon.com's Inside the Book]
>
>
>OED has 1953
>

Right, that's the one I was noting below, along with the lack of any
entry or documentation for the pop music "countdown".  Does anyone
have a date for that?  As I mentioned, I remember the music
countdowns themselves from the mid-1950s (top 40 of the week, top 400
of the year, even one for the decade--probably on 12/12/59), but I
can't remember when the word itself was introduced.  In any case, it
does seem culturally salient enough by now to have earned a place in
dictionaries, and AHD4 doesn't include it either, just the missile
sense.  Note that the standard sense provided for the latter--AHD's
is 'The counting backward aloud from an arbitrary starting number to
indicate the time remaining before an event or operation, such as the
launching of a missile or space vehicle'--doesn't really apply
directly to the former, in which the counting down *is* the event.
You can watch the AFI show tonight if you don't believe me.

Larry

>
>
>>  *In writing this, I began wondering when _countdown_ began--I
>>  remember it from pop/rock music radio shows, of the top n
>>  hits of the week or (on New Year's Eve) of the year, well
>>  before I heard it from those rocketry geeks over at Cape
>>  Canaveral, but the OED has lots of rocketry/missile launch
>>  cites (beginning 1953) and no entry for the pop radio usage,
>>  which is certainly where the "countdown" in shows like
>>  tonight's transferred from.  It's now very widespread--ESPN,
>>  for example, uses the device constantly for all sorts of
>>  shows ranking the top n whatevers (plays of the day, all-time
>>  comebacks, on-field blow-ups,...).
>>