Barber's pole
The trade sign is, by a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, a staff or pole with a helix of colored stripes (often red and white in many countries, but usually red, white and blue in Canada, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, and the United States).
[1][2] A "barber's pole" with a helical stripe is a familiar sight, and is used as a secondary metaphor to describe objects in many other contexts.
The pole itself represents the staff that the patient gripped during the procedure to encourage blood flow,[3] and the twined pole motif is likely related to the Caduceus, the staff of the Greek god of speed and commerce Hermes, evidenced for example by early physician van Helmont's description of himself as "Francis Mercurius Van Helmont, A Philosopher by that one in whom are all things, A Wandering Hermite.
In Renaissance-era Amsterdam, the surgeons used the colored stripes to indicate that they were prepared to bleed their patients (red), set bones or pull teeth (white), or give a shave if nothing more urgent was needed (blue).
[10] The William Marvy Company is now the sole manufacturer of barber poles in North America, and sells only 500 per year (compared to 5,100 in the 1960s).
[12] In Forest Grove, Oregon, the "World's Tallest Barber Shop Pole" measures 72 feet (22 m).
[13] The consistent use of this symbol for advertising can be seen as analogous to an apothecary's show globe, a tobacconist's cigar store Indian and a pawn broker's three gold balls.
In some American states, such as Michigan in March 2012, legislation has emerged proposing that barber poles should only be permitted outside barbershops, but not traditional beauty salons.
[19] Haemonchus contortus, or "barber's pole worm", is the parasitic nematode responsible for anemia, bottle jaw, and death of infected sheep[25] and goats, mainly during summer months in warm, humid climates.
[28] Stenopus hispidus is a shrimp-like popcorn kernel decapod crustacean sometimes called the "barber pole shrimp".
[32] In user interface design, a barber pole-like pattern is used in progress bars when the wait time is indefinite.
[34] The technology is used in wireless sensor networks which "have gathered a lot of attention as an important research domain" and were "deployed in many applications, e.g., navigation, military, ambient intelligence, medical, and industrial tasks.
The airspeed Indicator on aircraft capable of flying at altitude features a red/white striped needle resembling a barber pole.
Astronaut Jim Lovell can also be found describing system indications as "barber poled" in the transcript of radio transmissions during the Apollo 13 accident.
[38] The phrase barberpole continues to be found in many subsystem descriptions in the Space Shuttle News Reference Manual,[39] as well as the NASA/KSC Acronym List.
[41] Spad XIIIs of the 94th Aero Squadron USAS in early 1919 used variations on barber pole patterns, including: "Barber Pole" of Lieutenant Dudley "Red" Outcault; S.16546 "Flag Bus" of Captain Reed Chambers; and "Rising Sun" of Lieutenant John Jeffers.
The phrase barber pole is derisive jargon in craps, and refers to the commingling of "gaming cheques of different denominations".
William Roberts reports in The Book Hunter in London that certain 18th-century bookshops in the Little Britain district of London sported such poles: A few years before Nichols published [in 1816] his Literary Anecdotes, two booksellers used to sport their rubric posts close to each other here in Little Britain, and these rubric posts were once as much the type of a bookseller's shop as the pole is of a barber's ... Sewell, Cornhill, and Kecket and De Hondt, Strand, were among the last to use these curious trade signs.
[66] The Barberpole Cat Program[67] was created many years ago and features popular Barbershop songs arranged and voiced so all singers can learn and participate.
