This is the query I actually joined the forum to post. (It’s not my first post because other interesting topics caught my fancy first!)

First of all let me make it clear that I am using ‘pylons’ in the current primary British sense of steel towers to support overhead electricity transmission lines. I’m not talking about things to support underwing stores on aircraft or features of ancient Egyptian architecture and I’m most definitely not talking about orange plastic traffic cones.

The curiosity I’m trying to understand is why ‘pylon’ is the standard British term for these things, used by everyone except the electricity supply industry, who call them ‘towers’. I do visualisation work for environmental assessments of power lines (amongst other things) with the result that I’m completely schizophrenic about this: I call them pylons colloquially and towers when I’m being technical. (For example, I might refer to “that pylon over there” but then be more specific and say that it’s “an L8 tower”.)

Most terms for new and unfamiliar objects in the visual environment tend to trickle into common use from the people who introduce them, but that seems not to be the case in this instance.

As an informal means of carrying out research on this, I have been using the new online archive at The Times’ website. There were a few electricity pylons around from the beginning of the 20th century, but the key period of interest is from 1928 onwards which is when the National Grid (the UK high-voltage electricity transmission network) was built. A report dated 13 September 1928 announces work starting on the first section of the grid. There is no mention of pylons in it anywhere. (However, I suspect from its language, it may be largely based on an official press release from the government agency responsible for the work.)

Going back to May that year, I found a report expressing the aviation industry’s concern that pylons should not be placed near aerodromes or in the middle of large fields which might be useful for emergency landings. This is the first use of ‘pylon’ in the electricity sense that I have come across in The Times. It’s used without explanation, so it was presumably expected that the readership would understand that ‘electricity transmission tower’ was meant.

Subsequent to the commencement of work on the grid, there are lots of instances of articles and letters with ‘pylon’ in them, mostly expressing concern at the despoilation of the British countryside.

Going back in time a bit further, I find ‘pylon’ used in a sense I believe to be obsolete now: large temporary decorative structures erected along the route of a parade or procession, often to support banners or decorative swags across the road. The most interesting of these instances I came across was in a report dated 20 May 1925 describing King George V opening the new power station at Barking (East London). It describes his civic reception and the procession to the power station that followed (they didn’t have motorcades then!). I quote “White pylons of effective design had been erected on either side of the approach road to the power station, and these were linked with strings of greenery and flags.”

So in 1925, we find ornamental pylons next to a power station (which presumably has the other kind of pylons too) without any need for the article to clarify the term and in 1928, we find pylon being used in the electricity sense, also without any clarification. I find it surprising that a word could undergo a shift of this nature as quickly as this.

The OED (I’m using V2 of the CD-ROM) gives a 1923 citation as the earliest use of pylon in the sense of support structure in a rather obscure novel called “The Richest Man” by Edward Shanks. It’s not clear whether the pylons in question are for electricity or for something like an aerial ropeway associated with a mine (although I suspect the latter).

I wonder if anyone can shed any light on the apparent suddenness of the appearance of ‘pylon’ in the electricity sense or on the curious differentiation between colloquial ‘pylons’ and professional ‘towers’.

Ian

As it happens, the online OED entry for “pylon” was revised in March of this year, but it still doesn’t help much.  However, I throw out this suggestion for what it may be worth.

My impression of the 1923 citation, in conjunction with the phrasing of the definition, is that it did not refer to an electrical cable but something more like a funicular.  For the benefit of those without OED access, I give both the definition and citation:

5. A tall tower-like structure erected as a support for a cable, etc.; spec. (now the principal use) a lattice-work metal tower for carrying overhead electricity lines.
1923 E. SHANKS Richest Man iii. 52 Half a mile up the mountain, a cable, a thin black line, traversed the crystal air, borne up on pylons.

The next citation, OTOH, clearly refers to electrical towers:

1930 W. H. AUDEN Poems 67 Pylons fallen or subsiding, trailing dead high-tension wires.

The OED entry goes on to mention the Pylon poets:

C2. attrib. (usually with capital initial). Designating or relating to (the work of) those poets of the 1930s (chiefly W. H. Auden, Cecil Day Lewis, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender) who used industrial scenes and imagery as themes of their poetry.
After Spender’s poem ‘The Pylons’, published in 1933.

That poem begins:

The secret of these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone made,
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages.

Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete
That trails black wire;
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret.

Possibly this sense of the word “pylon” was popularized by Auden’s and Spender’s poetry?  And they in turn might have chosen it for the irony of the associations with ancient monuments.  OTOH, if you’ve found that usage in 1928, then they can at most have helped to spread a usage that was already extant.

I remember reading a book by William Faulkner called “Pylon”. It’s a book about (inter alia) aeroplane racing. Googling to refresh my memory, I find it was published in 1934. At the amazon.com website there’s a picture of a dustjacket, showing a checkered obelisk, presumably the sort of pylon the book’s title refers to. In ancient chariot races, an obelisk marking the turning point on the race track was called meta. I don’t know why anyone should think of calling it a “pylon”.

In the 1925 article about King George V, cited by Dr Fortran, the term “pylon” is used in the ancient, architectural sense. I find Dr. Techie’s suggestion, regarding the popularization of the term “pylon” to mean “towers carrying high-tension wires”, by Auden, Spender et al., wholly convincing. Maybe they chose it because “pylon” is easier to fit into a line of verse than something like “tower made from a lattice of steel girders”. ;-)

Old man’s grumble: People who power their homes with electricity, and rant about the defilement of the countryside, are about on a par with people who own three cars and contribute to “Greenpeace”

Here’s the OED entry for that sense, which cites the Faulkner work in question, among others:

3. a. A tall structure used to mark out the course round which an aircraft flies.

1909 Flight 13 Mar. 143/1 The machine is brought to earth conveniently close to the pylone. 1909 Westm. Gaz. 16 Oct. 9/3 After a successful round of the course his aeroplane came to earth near the second pylon on the south side.  .......................... 1935 W. FAULKNER Pylon 32 A poor fourth on the first pylon and now coming in third on the third lap{em}oh oh oh, look at him take that pylon! ..........

It’s also worth noting the OED etymology. The sense of a support tower for a cable first appears in French, so it’s likely the English usage jumped from across the channel:

< ancient Greek πυλών gateway, in Hellenistic Greek also gate tower, gatehouse < πύλη gate (see -PYLE comb. form) + -ών, suffix forming nouns. Compare French pylône portal of an Egyptian temple (1819), tall structure erected as a support for a cable, etc. (1888).

Dave Wilton - 25 July 2008 05:46 AM

It’s also worth noting the OED etymology. The sense of a support tower for a cable first appears in French, so it’s likely the English usage jumped from across the channel:

Pylône is the standard French term for an electricity pylon in both the colloquial and professional sense (cf website of French transmission network operator RTE)

I’m also not sure what connection (if any) there is with the use of pylon as a term for the support towers of a suspension bridge.

Props to Dave--I looked at the OED etymology, but obviously not closely enough.  The idea that English use of the term for electrical towers is based on the French usage is far more plausible than my suggestion.