Wait — chyrons are named after a centaur?

Via email from NYTimes.com (nytdirect@nytimes.com); original article contains additional links/an illustration

By Caity Weaver

Centaur image (not from entry) from 

The ancient Greek poets tell us that Achilles honed many of his survival skills (medicine, martial arts, playing the lyre well) under the guidance of a teacher named Chiron, who was conceived after at least one of his parents — possibly both — had transmogrified into equine form. He was a centaur, born “half like a horse, half like a god,” a circumstance that bothered his mother so much that she became a linden tree (seems hypocritical, don’t @ me).

The poets tell us, too, that Chiron was not biologically related to the other centaurs who shared his mountain domain (they were the offspring of a king and a cloud), which is either the craziest thing I have ever heard or it’s much easier to inadvertently make a centaur than I realized.

Thousands of years ago, people invented stories about half-animal magical tutors to pass down and explain the origins of extrinsic knowledge, and to derive order and meaning from human existence.

Today, all the world’s information resides on a single radiant web page maintained by Ricola. It is Ricola, the cough drop manufacturer, that passes on the legend and teachings of Chiron in an area of Ricola.com devoted to cataloging its lozenges’ (inactive) ingredients derived from plant extracts.

From the explanation of the ingredient yarrow:

“The Latin name achillea millefolium is derived from the Greek achilleios, which can be translated as ‘herb of Achilles.’ The hero of the Trojan War, Achilles was trained in the art of healing wounds by the centaur Chiron.”

And, indeed, when Eurypylus asks Patroclus to use medicine he learned about from Achilles, who learned about it from Chiron, it says right there in the “Iliad” in plain Homeric Greek: “Upon it herb threw bitter hand rubbed hard killing all total pain of the body. Then the wound was made to end the blood gush.” (Good poem.) A bitter herb that makes the wound be made to end the blood gush? Yes, girl — that’s yarrow.

Ricola.com teaches that elderflower grows on the forest edge. That one can make a kind of thyme honey by adding some thyme to honey. Under the “History” section of “Sage,” Ricola.com shares an educational story about people robbing corpses:

Body-snatchers

During a major outbreak of plague in 1630, faith in the healing effects of sage was so strong that thieves in Toulouse rubbed a sage/herb/vinegar mix into their skin to protect themselves against infection before going out into the night to rob cadavers. When caught, they were told that their lives would be spared if they revealed the secret of how they inoculated themselves.

This sounds apocryphal, and yet Ricola.com’s claims are as true as the purple blossoms of the common sage plant, which is to say: overall faithful to the concept, subject to minor variations depending on source.

In a version of the story printed in a French magazine in 1721, the thieves strangled plague victims in their beds before burglarizing their homes, and shared the details of their concoction to mitigate their punishment from burning to hanging. Also: That recipe lists several herbs, but not la sauge. (Later versions incorporate it.)

But if Ricola.com is the modern Chiron in practice, what is the modern Chiron in name? That is “chyrons” — the unremitting onscreen text graphics beloved by the president that turn television news programs into frantic, kinetic information collages.

“Chyron” (pronounced KY-ron) is a genericization of an electronic graphics platform invented in the 1970s by Systems Resource Corporation, a company on Long Island. [JB emphasis] (In the early days, getting text and graphics on screen was a less high-tech process; one might simply aim a camera at decorative cards or hand-cranked credit rolls.) The Chiron line proved so popular that the company was moved to rename itself; since “Chiron” was already registered to another corporation, the founders settled for a slight misspelling.

Much initial chyron usage revolved around TV sports coverage: revealing racehorse names at the Breeders’ Cup and statistics about Olympic records. Over time, it evolved for breaking news — local to global — providing unobtrusive updates about election results and school snow days at the bottom of the screen, freeing up anchors to discuss other topics.

Omnipresent news tickers have been a fixture of American media for so many years now, it can be jarring to remember how and why they moved in permanently. It happened on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Initially, text streamed across networks performing its familiar alert function: surfacing urgent information (catastrophe locations, travel warnings, evacuation bulletins) out of uncertainty. Eventually, the urgency faded. The information, however, remained behind. (Here’s an interesting meditation on why.)

If we think of our nation’s chyrons as one long, continuous statement, Fox News’s treatise begins: “A DAY OF TERROR IN THE UNITED STATES …” Its news ticker rolled onto the screen approximately two hours into its network coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, never to leave again.

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“Wait —" is a weekly newsletter in which Caity Weaver investigates an unanswered question in the news and pop culture. If you haven't signed up to receive it yet, please do! If you want to unsubscribe, you can do that at the bottom of this email. And if you have thoughts, write us at wait@nytimes.com.