Palindromes

[ssorthiek]

A totally useless bit of information.

A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of characters which reads the same backward as forward.

Therefore the word “rotavator” is a particularly long palindrome.

[charlie]

I believe it is the longest single word palindrome in English.

[wristpin]

I believe it is the longest single word palindrome in English

Could also be the most misused word!

[trusty220]

……and mis-spelt!!

[ssorthiek]

Spelling was never my strong point and I did wonder whether the spelling of the trademark Rotavator or Rotovator and I can’t find a definitive answer on the internet.

From the Collins English Dictionary I found both spellings and defined as a noun. Collins also makes reference to it being a trademark, but it’s less clear which spelling this is, however a further search of the internet seems to suggest that Rotavator is a trade mark of CNH INDUSTRIAL DANMARK but there were no results of Rotovater being trademarked.

I would hazard a guess that Rotavator was mis-spelt Rotovator for such a long time that it made it into the English language, who knows?

I started this article as a bit of fun but it turns out to be a little more interesting that I first thought.

[wristpin]

The company name was Howard Rotavator Co Ltd, and Rotavator was trade marked. At one time Howard used the slogan “ if it doesn’t read the same backwards as forwards, it’s not a Rotavator” . They also used a mirror image of the slogan.
With the demise of the Howard company and manufacturing rights passing to Dowdswell, the trade mark also went there .
What is interesting is that I have Howard literature going back to the late 50s and there is no mention of Rotavator being a trade mark on it. Less litigious times in those days perhaps. Unlike my first employer, the Caterpillar Tractor Co. who went to great lengths rap the knuckles of any unfortunate journalist who used caterpillar ( lower case c) in a generic manner to describe a crawler or track laying vehicle.
As far as rotovator goes, I guess that it either developed as an error, or from more switched on writers wishing to describe rotary tillers without impinging Howard’s trade mark. Howard themselves used the by line “ The world’s largest manufacturers of rotary tillage equipment”

[alan]

I have had a look through newspaper archives and see that some dealer adverts in the 1950’s onwards refer to ‘Howard Rotavators’ as in the attached 1956 Cyril Johnson advert, this may however just be a sloppy way of the person who compiled the advert referring to the Howard company or what they produced. The Johnson advert also says “If it’s not a Howard – it’s not a Rotavator”, I wonder if at this point the word Rotavator had become associated with other manufacturers machines in much the way we use Google to refer to searching the internet or call a vacuum cleaner a Hoover.

Another word that have may spun off from Rotavator is rotavation, a word used in Howard adverts certainly from the 1940’s on. The 1950’s North Street Motors advert says “It’s worth seeing “Rotavation” in action” and the 1949 Ernest doe advert mentions Rotavation. Also the 1952 newspaper article details Howard and ‘The new process of land reclamation known as rotavation…’

The word ‘rotavating’ appears in a couple of small line adverts for Howard in the 1940’s and in the 1960’s I see there are line adverts for jobbing gardeners offering to ‘rotavate’ or to have one’s garden ‘rotavated’ but this could refer to using any suitable machine on the market to do the job. A 1968 advert: “Craig’s Rotavating Services, Gardens Rotavated, Grass Cut, trees felled, Phone…etc”.

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[ssorthiek]

I find it absolutely incredible how a light hearted and seemingly unimportant post has created such an interesting conversation. I just found a random piece of information and a flurry of associated posts ensued, all of which are interesting in their own right.

I guess this is the point of VHGMC and the forum with so many people with different experiences. I can’t fault it.

[trusty220]

I’m glad that you see things our way- collectively we have a wealth of information that needs to be shared or recorded for future generations. That is why I wrote my two books on the Trusty so that my research doesn’t get forgotten when I’m gone; unfortunately we can’t all write books and this forum is the easiest way for people to put the information down, however trivial it may seem, so that it gives the future collectors some information that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to find.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that the rotavator was sometimes referred to as a rotary hoe; I turned up some Trusty Earthquake literature that described it as a Rotary Hoe, with obvious legal implications from the rival firm of Rotary Hoes Ltd.

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[dorigny]

I had to do a brushcutter and trimmer course to keep up with compliance at work.. Nylon line trimmer, not a strimmer 😉 as I understand that Strimmer is a trademark..however, Nylon isn’t 🙂

C.

[charlie]

Then of course there is Rototiller. First used I believe by SIMAR but later becoming a US company name.

[hdtrust]

Yes the old rotavator word! My date of birth is a palindrome reads the same on a driving license, so what could it be! The initials and my sir name, spell out the area of the city where I was born in.So is that a fluke or was there something else going on.
So who am I?
Regards to all
Mr Wallingfield

[trusty220]

You could have saved that one for the Christmas Quiz, Andrew!

[ssorthiek]

Hopefully I won’t offend, but I think your date of birth is 3rd of March and you would therefore have been born in 1933. Alas, this is as far as I have got so far. There are two other dates but that would put you at nearly 100 and well over 100 years old which seem unlikely albeit possible. I am of course prone to stupid errors but that’s my guess so far.

[hdtrust]

Try a date nearer to 60 years! And remember the driving license is in reverse (not the driver)
Regards
Mr Wallingfield
PS Try putting wallingfield into google and see what appears

[Author]

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