

Controls included a "Decade Switch" that went up to 11. Gibson Les Paul guitars with low- impedance pickups were outfitted with special controls designed by Les Paul himself. During a trial run with a reporter from Popular Mechanics aboard, a C&O engineer expressed his dissatisfaction with a local speed limit of 75 miles per hour (121 km/h), noting that he would "Sure like to be able to pull it back to eleven!" : 110, 252

The locomotive's cruising speed was 70 miles per hour (113 km/h), at which point the throttle was on "seven". The locomotive's throttle included eleven settings, ranging from one (idling) to eleven (full speed). In 1947, the Baldwin Locomotive Works and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway introduced the Chesapeake and Ohio class M-1 steam turbine locomotive. The use of "11" as a maximum pre-dates This Is Spinal Tap by almost forty years. Believing that this numbering increases the highest volume of the amp, he explains, "It's one louder, isn't it?" When Marty asks why not simply make the 10 setting louder, Nigel hesitates before responding blankly again, " These go to eleven." Other instances Prior examples Ĭ&O's No. 500 first went "up to 11" in 1947. While Nigel is showing Marty his Marshall guitar amplifiers, he points out a selection whose control knobs all have a highest setting of eleven, unlike standard amplifiers whose volume settings are typically numbered from 0 to 10. In this scene, Nigel gives the rockumentary's director, Marty DiBergi, played by Rob Reiner, a tour of his stage equipment. The phrase was coined in a scene from the 1984 mockumentary/ rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap by the character Nigel Tufnel, played by Christopher Guest.

