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Post by convair62 on Jun 9, 2012 23:45:26 GMT
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Post by darrenvox on Jun 10, 2012 19:04:05 GMT
looks cool, why did they call it black meatball?
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Post by aerofoto - HJG Admin on Jun 10, 2012 21:12:27 GMT
Because in either red or black form .... that's what it essentially looked like .... to the "imagination" of some  Mark C AKL/Nz |
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Post by christrott on Jun 10, 2012 21:35:46 GMT
In aviation, any round logo/symbol/roundel/object that is a solid color is called a "meatball". The term goes back to World War I. It gained wider notoriety when the Imperial Japanese began marking their aircraft with large red dots. The marking was known as the "Red Meatball." Additionally, the original US markings (which were a blue dot with a star inside and no bars) was known as the "Blue Meatball." The US began adding bars of various designs after the start or WWII due to aircrew and anti-aircraft gunners in the heat of battle and/or in poor lighting conditions not being able to reliably and quickly identify the difference between the two.
Post-War, the term was then applied to the Optical Landing System used on aircraft carriers where a very bright white light with a vertical mirror system was used in conjunction with a series of fixed horizontal lights to allow pilots to visually determine the proper glidepath to the arresting wires. The "Meatball" is usually shortened to "Ball" in most references and videos you might see, thus why you hear the words "Call the Ball" from the carrier's Landing Signal Officer.
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Post by aerofoto - HJG Admin on Jun 10, 2012 23:35:36 GMT
I was so focussed of the actual CO logo itself .... and it's industry non-de-plume .... that I completly forgot about the significance of "meatball" in military terminology .... particularly in respect of the like of the IJAF and during WW2 when the name was probably popularised.
In other parts of the world .... in "my space" for instance .... such logos have always been refered to as "roundels" .... for as long as I can rember and beyond .... and also probably originating during WW2.
Mark C
AKL/NZ
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Post by Tony Madge - HJG on Jun 11, 2012 9:41:29 GMT
I will look at doing this and also re doing the present meatball ones  |
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Post by convair62 on Jun 11, 2012 14:20:09 GMT
That's great news! Thank you Tony.
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Post by garryrussell on Jun 11, 2012 19:01:49 GMT
I've never known them called meatballs outside of the US
I call it a globe, same with the Pan Am "Globe" called a meatball
Seems very much a US thing
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Post by darrenvox on Jun 11, 2012 19:04:49 GMT
Ok, thanks for clearing this up
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Post by christrott on Jun 12, 2012 18:51:32 GMT
Garry, I've heard it from Brits, Canadians, and Aussies, although all were military/ex-military. PanAm's logo wasn't a solid color "globe" until late in life. The original logo was an actual globe, with North and South America depicted on it. In later years, when the Jet Livery was developed and to compact the logo design, they changed the globe to an "artistic globe" using lines of latitude and a single Meridian to represent the 2 continents broken by the words "Pan Am" (look closely at the logo, the meridian is not continuous, it breaks at the 2 Tropical Latitude lines). Because of this, the logo remained being called a "globe". When Continental airlines changed to the current Globe logo in the 1980's, it too began to be called the "Continental Globe" for the same reason as it is a representation of the globe, not just a dot with a few lines in it. |
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