In doing this story, our curiosity over this "Zot" thing became overpowering. That was because we started seeing references to the "Zot Box" and the "ZOTZ" in the context of our story and we had a photo of patch provided to us by a Blindbat aircraft commander who flew the LGB designation missions. This patch was developed in about 1970.
Such patches are great collectibles, because they usually tell a story, and that is certainly true here. Paveway of course refers to the LGB development program. White lightning most probably refers to the laser designator's "white light." But getting down to the nuts and bolts, the patch carries a brown animal that turns out to be an anteater. And, of course, there in big red letters is the term "ZOT."
After quite a bit of digging, we learned that our fighting boys in the early days of laser-guided bombing referred to laser designation as "Zotting." They did so based on their university studies of Johnny Hart's BC comic strip "Zot." Hart created and drew the comic strip "B.C.", "Before Christ," in 1958 and it still runs to this day.
In one series, Hart had a character that was an anteater.
This is a Johnny Hart comic portrayal of the anteater using his tongue to capture an ant in mid-air after it was propelled out of the anthill by the anteater slapping the ground with his trunk The sound of the anteater's lethally accurate tongue, you can see, was "ZOT." This particular artwork was done in the 1970s. The photo here was taken from a frosted glass pitcher you can buy with two such comic strip art features on it, courtesy of Ruby Lane.
In any event, laser designation became known as "Zotting," the laser designator came to be known as the "Zot Box."
The term "ZOT" is intriguing. Do a Google search on it and you will be amazed, perhaps horrified, at how many internet sites deal with this term. In the vernacular, more frequently than not it has come to connote getting "zapped," frequently by a laser, but by also by electricity, and even a nuclear atomizer used by "Commander ZOT" to wipe out aliens! It is a favorite term used by sci-fi lovers and comic book writers. The mascot for the University of California at Irvine is an anteater based on the BC comic, and its battle cry is "Zot!" Other battle cries include "Give 'em tongue" and "Rip 'em Eaters."
The mascot was adopted in 1965, just about the time our pilots were rolling out of the comforts of university life and into the cockpit of their mean-machines outfitted to start a revolution in precision bombing that has turned around the way American military forces fight and win. So, it is understandable how the term "Zot" would make such a rapid transfer to laser designation in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Believe it or not, ZOT also is an acronym used by scientists working with lasers that refers to the "Zeeman-shift optical trap," or ZOT. The ZOT is a means by which scientists holding a cluster of neutral atoms suspended in a very small space, in a high vacuum. It is particularly useful for studying the decay products of radioactive atoms. Held in such a trap, these atoms are not in contact with any substrate with which they could interact, so the products observed arise only from the radioactive decay. Laser beams are used to slow the atoms' movements to confine them to a small region. The laser not only can direct the course of these atoms, they provide the confinement.