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Glossary of Terms.
What/Where/Why 'Grapevine'?
While the name is commonly used to denote a longer stretch of Interstate 5,
the "Grapevine" is actually just the 6.5-mile segment of highway that runs from Fort Tejon
northward to the bottom of the grade in the San Joaquin Valley. In 1772, Spanish military officer
Pedro Fages, then-governor of California, named the north side "Cañada de Las Uvas,"
or Canyon of the Grapes, for the wild cimarron grapes that once grew there. Contrary to popular
belief, the name "Grapevine" is unrelated to the serpentine course of the 1915 Ridge Route
highway in the same location.
What is Placer Mining?
Placer mining refers to the extraction of gold from a placer deposit.
Gold occurs naturally in two basic forms: in a lode (the primary source);
or in a placer deposit (a secondary source).
In a lode, hydrothermal forces have pushed the gold
up into solid rock from deep within the earth. Hard-rock mining techniques are used crush the rock
and extract the gold.
If a lode deteriorates (erodes), gold
particles are freed. The source of the erosion — rain, a river, etc. — carries the gold
particles until they settle, usually in quiet part a sandy riverbed. This secondary deposit, the
place where the gold accumulates, is called a "placer."
Placer mining involves the use of a pan or sluice box to separate the gold
from the lighter sand and gravel around it.
What is a Real Photo Postcard?
A real photo postcard, or "RPPC" in the conventional lingo,
is an actual photographic print (i.e., a photo), as opposed to a printed, mass-produced postcard.
Way back when, photographers had the option to have their
photographs produced on preprinted postcard stock. Thus an RPPC is an original print that has been
produced photographically in a darkroom. In contrast, mass-produced
picture postcards are generated lithographically on a printing press. As a result,
RPPCs are generally much rarer than printed postcards. (Photographers occasionally produced more
than one original print — an "original print" being one that was produced
from a negative in the manner described above. Multiple
RPPCs of certain images of Newhall in 1909, for instance, are known.)
RPPCs have much greater detail than printed postcards, and
the difference is easily distinguished under a magnifying glass.
If you see a dot pattern in a black and white picture postcard (or a
peculiar lithographic pattern in a color postcard), it's not an RPPC.
Color postcards, even "linen" postcards and those which appear to be hand-tinted, are almost never RPPCs.
'Santa Ana' Winds?
The term "Santa Ana winds" seems to be a mid-20th-century bastardization
of the original term, "Santana winds," or "devil winds" — "Santana" being a Spanish
variant of "Satan." Most sources attribute its folk etymology (the alteration of an
unfamiliar word over time to resemble a more familiar word) to early television news commentators.
These hot, drying winds don't originate in the city of Santa Ana; rather, they occur when the
air coming off the desert is squeezed through the mountain passes and is forced in a southeasterly direction toward the ocean. (Their
opposite, the colder onshore flow, travels northwesterly from the ocean toward the desert.) The following explanation is excerpted from the city of Los Angeles Fire Department's official
report on the Bel Air Brush Fire of Nov. 6, 1961 (at lafire.com):
The most significant weather factor contributing to the demonic fury of the
conflagration which assailed Bel Air and Brentwood was the prevailing wind condition. Called variously "Santanas,"
"Santa Anas" or "Devil Winds," they are a phenomenon which occurs in the coastal regions
of Southern California during the late fall and winter months. These winds are generally characterized by conditions
of drastically low humidifies and high velocities. Effects on atmospheric temperatures are dependent upon the state
of variable forces which affect the winds during their formation. Usually there is a marked temperature rise, especially
if the Santana conditions persist over a prolonged period.
The initial formation of the Santana winds occurs as a large, cold air mass from the
polar regions of the Pacific moves south into the arid interior areas of Utah, Nevada and eastern California.
From these barren wastes, the mass travels south and south-westward, influenced by atmospheric pressure
differentials between the interior areas and the reaches of the Pacific Ocean. As the currents flow across the arid
deserts and into the passes and canyons of the coastal mountains, they are dried and heated. Under conditions
of moderate barometric gradients, the winds funnel through the passes; compressing to increase velocities to gale force.
If pressure gradients are excessive, the winds will pour directly over the mountains to strike the Los Angeles Basin
a few miles south of the foothills. In such instances, great clouds of dust are raised to tinge the skies.
Temperatures are raised by compressional heating as the wind currents descend to progressively lower levels.
As these winds whip through the mountains and across the surface of the coastal lowlands,
every wisp of vegetation and every stick of wood is drained of any vestige of moisture. Relative humidity readings
fall ominously and have been recorded as low as three and four percent.
The arrival of these winds on the coastal plain is presaged by clearing skies,
starry nights, and a drop in temperatures. As the Santana begins to blow, temperatures rise and the relative humidity
plummets rapidly. It is not unusual for Santana conditions to last for a week. With each passing hour, the fire
danger increases.
What is Vulcanizing?
Vulcanization is a technique for hardening rubber by heating and chemically combining
it with sulfur. The process also makes the rubber stronger and more elastic. If the sulfur
content is increased to as much as 30 percent, the product is the inelastic solid known as
ebonite. More expensive alternatives to sulfur, such as selenium and tellurium, are used
to vulcanize rubber for specialized products such as vehicle tires. The process was discovered
accidentally by U.S. inventor Charles Goodyear in 1839 and patented in 1844. Accelerators
can be added to speed the vulcanization process, which takes from a few minutes for small objects
to an hour or more for vehicle tires. Molded objects are often shaped and vulcanized
simultaneously in heated molds; other objects may be vulcanized in hot water, hot air or steam.
The first pneumatic (inflatable) rubber tire was patented by R.W. Thomson in 1845; John Boyd Dunlop
of Belfast independently reinvented pneumatic tires for use with bicycles in 1888-89. Information: Helicon Publishing Ltd.
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