In
the facsimile of the Magna Carta I’ve got (in the back of my "Webster's
New International Dictionary, 3rd Edition" ) one of the signators'
quaky scrawls very clearly spells "Spag."
I'm guessing this was Lord Wembly Spagthorpe - no doubt, his contemporaries would have been riding one of his steam-powered "wiener-steamers" (so called because the lack of ducting on the exhaust led to, err, warm moist parts if the rider sat astride for too long).1 As the later versions of the wiener-steamers had dual-action pistons (power being applied in both directions) they would be correctly termed "1-strokes."
1. Eventually, the term "wiener-steamer" transmuted to "wiener-dog," due to the barking sound that was produced when the exhaust ports opened during full-throttle operation. Because of the general shape of the cylindrical boiler, the name was stuck. This led to the tradition of later Spagthorpe designs being named after dogs. |