Photography used to involve aiming a device by looking down a sight, removing a cap from a barrel (the lens cap from the lens housing), and exploding flash powder to adequately light the scene.

I’d imagine many described it as feeling like facing a firing squad

Interesting then if the term "shot" comes from motion pictures but slipped "backwards" to include still pictures, which had a completely different mechanism.

my experience, it's not so much a gun trigger as it is a thumb trigger. at least that was our setup. really fun to use with a 35mm doing stop motion

Interesting, I never thought about seconds having anything to do with the number 2.

Also, "channel" and "canal" are the result of borrowing the same French word (chanel) at two different times (this happened with many words). In Middle English most words were stressed the first syllable, so chanel became "channel", then by the time it was borrowed again, chanel kept the same French stress on the last syllable and became "canal".

Neat. I didn't realize that canon and cannon actually came from the same root.

They have altered the canna, pray they do not alter it any further.

Cannoli: Sicilian pastries consisting of a tube-shaped shell of fried pastry dough, filled with a sweet and creamy filling containing ricotta cheese.

Yeah, that one changed within my lifetime. It's interesting how "rolling" is even in there.

Say the very first car windows had been electric. It wouldn't be called rolling down because there was no "rolling" mechanism. But, we probably wouldn't call it "powering down" or "buttoning down". We'd probably just say something like "lowering the window". So... why did whoever coined that term decide to include "rolling" in the name? Especially because you still need the "up" and "down". You can't just "roll the window".

You also "dial" a phone number, even though the mechanism for choosing the phone number hasn't been a dial in decades. But, at least in that case there wasn't an obvious name for the process of entering a phone number into the system. A car window just goes up and down, why should it matter if it's done with a rolling mechanism or a button? Even though you turn a knob to open a door, you don't "doorknob open" it or "handle shut" the door. You also raise or lower an anchor, you don't "crank the ank", even though that would be cooler to say.

Makes sense. Also even without that, the camera had a tube-type thing that you aimed at someone, then you pushed a button or pulled a lever that was pretty similar to a trigger. Still seems a bit weird because you're not sending anything towards your target, you're just taking in some light from that direction. But if you add the big "boom" from the chemical flash, I guess it seems like a gun.