[ExI] AI 2040

[Russell Standish]

On Sat, Jul 18, 2026 at 06:17:41AM -0400, John Clark wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 18, 2026 at 1:48 AM Russell Standish <lists at hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
> 
> 
>     > And another plan (Plan R for "Russell" :) is to go "balls to the wall"
>     (I'd hate to think what kinky behaviour inspired that phrase)
> 
> 
> According to Google Ngram that phrase first became popular in 1829: 
> 
> Balls to the wall   
>

Fair enough - according to the urban dictionary, the phrase arose in
the '60s from aeroplane throttles, which typically have balls on the
end of the throttle levers. Which makes sense, though Google ngram
reports the phrase as existing in the 1890s, well before Kitty
Hawk. Though I don't see anything as early as 1829. However, these
might be coocurrances of the words in the phrase. If I quote "balls to
the wall", then the first ngram occurrance is in 1973. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22balls+to+the+wall%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3


Cheers

-- 

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Dr Russell Standish                    Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders     hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au
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