Gerald from Gaspee Point, Rhode Island, wants to know the story behind the term dashboard. Originally a dashboard was wood or leather placed at the front in horse-drawn vehicles to keep the driver and passengers from being dashed with mud, water, or snow. Later dashboard was transferred to the front inside panel of a car with gauges and controls, and eventually to a digital panel on a computer screen that helps monitor data and other features. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Dashboards, From Wagons to Digital Screens”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Yeah, hello. My name is Gerald. I am in Gatsby Point, Rhode Island.
Welcome to the show. What’s up?
I have a question about the word dashboard. I think I can parse out where the board part comes from, but the dash part, I’m baffled to buy.
So you’re thinking about the dashboard on a car or vehicle.
Yeah.
Yeah, and you’re exactly right that dash is the key part of that word.
In the 1300s, dash meant to strike suddenly and violently. But over time, it also came to have the meaning of to sprinkle or to splatter.
So if, say, you ran through a driving rain to get to my house, Gerald, and you showed up at my door, I might say, you know, come on in. Your clothes are dashed with mud.
And that’s the kind of dash that we’re talking about here, because back in the days of horse-drawn carriages, the term dashboard was applied to this panel of wood or leather that went in front of the driver. It was set on the carriage in front of the driver and passengers to keep them from being dashed by water or mud or snow.
The term applied to that panel was then applied later to the panel that protected the occupants of horseless carriages from the heat of the oil and the engine. And then over time, we kept adding things to it, you know, dials and other options. So it’s really this vestige of the old days when you had to protect yourself against mud and water and snow.
Nice. Well, that’s a great explanation. I kind of expected something like that, but… Oh, did you? Didn’t know.
What brought it to mind? Why were you thinking about dashboards?
Well, it wasn’t actually in reference to a vehicle at the time. I was using a dashboard to manage something on a social media account.
Yeah.
That’s where I wanted to go with this.
Exactly. It is very interesting that it’s now made this third jump into the computing world where it’s a screen or interface that shows us statistics or charts or analyses of our underlying data.
In a human-readable format, right?
Yes.
And who knows? Maybe there’ll be a fourth act. Who can say when we get these neural implants? We’ll have like mental dashboards maybe.
Well, Gerald, thanks for the call. Really appreciate it. Take care now.
Yeah, thank you.
Thanks, Gerald.
Bye-bye.
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