Originally Posted by
Ritterview
Not to be pedantic, but isn't it more properly called a boom tube?
Only by those who are intimidated by or too politically correct to use the word boob. Bottom tube, keel tube, boom tube, boob tube... are all acceptable and depending on my mood or audience I'll use different terms but my favorite is boob, probably because it's pretty arcane and was the first term I heard used to describe what Sheldon preferred to call the Boom or Keel tube. Bottom Tube is actually the term that I find used most often in 1890's vintage documents that describe the construction of tandems, which makes perfect sense given that the upper-most tube is often times called the Top Tube.
However, for anyone who cares, a Hobbes posting by Bill McCready back in '94 provided this piece of tandem lexicon history.
Originally Posted by Bill McCready
"Boob tube" goes back to the mid-'60s and was coined by Pete van Nuys, who
made up this term when no one could tell him the proper name for the tube
connecting the bottom brackets of his tandem. After deciding "bottom bracket
tube" was too long and determining "B-B tube" was too short, Pete concluded
"boob tube" was just right. Boob tube soon became a common term and achieved
publication by the early '70s. In the mid '70s boob-tube was found on the
framebuilding forms used by Bud's Bike Shop when ordering tandems from
framebuilders around the world. In 1976 the Taylor brothers of Jack Taylor
Cycles in England became the first foreigners to adopt this terminology. By
the late '70s boob became a standard noun used by Japanese framebuilders and
their suppliers to describe a tandem's special tube (and when Tange's
engineers confer in their native language, "tandem" and "boob" are about the
only words I understand). In Italy, too, this word is used by tube suppliers
and frame designers when conversing in Italian.
"Drainpipe" is older British slang for the same tube. This term has never
attained international usage.
"Boom tube" is a bastardization of boob tube that first appeared in a
Specialized tandem ad published in 1991. Though someone at Specialized
admitted this was a unfortunate typo, the term is easily understood by
sailing enthusiasts who note the similarity of this tube's orientation to a
sailboat's boom. Some prudish people have continued to use this word as it
seems to them a less-crude variation.