Author Topic: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot  (Read 13838 times)

Bob Thrun

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Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« on: July 06, 2009, 08:26:37 PM »
A few months ago I started to look at the origins of what Ashley calls the Lineman's Loop, ABOK 1053.  I got distracted from this project and just recently restarted it.  Ashley attributed it to James M. Drew.  Cyrus Day said that the first publication was in a booklet entitled Rope and its Uses  by A. A. Burger in 1914.  This was called the Butterfly Noose by Wright and Magowan in 1928.  The name Butterfly Knot is in common use today.  Some add the superfluous adjective Alpine.  Alan Warild even has both Alpine Butterfly and Butterfly in his table of knot strengths!  I was able to contact him.  What he calls the Butterfly was called the Half-Hitch Noose by W&M.

I lost my notes and did not immediately recall what I had done before.  I did a simple Google search for:  Burger "Rope and its Uses" .  Last night I got only two hits.  Today I got 15.  The second hit was a Google Books scan of the 1917 edition that was revised by another author.  The URL is very long
http://books.google.com/books?id=DurNAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=Burger+%22Rope+and+its+Uses%22&source=bl&ots=V2bacueLD3&sig=fr0zqA7pdxnrcDC-kFHb_7isWoQ&hl=en&ei=F0NSSpbxHYy4lAf7kvTKBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2

I would have preferred to find a scan of the original 1914 edition, but the 1917 version relieves me of any pressure to get a copy of the 1914 edition.  The Google scan comes from the University of Michigan.  Burger calls the knot the Lineman's Rider.  I do not know what a rider is.

I now recall how I did my original search.  Burger's pamphlet was published at Iowa State.  The Iowa State library does not have a copy.  It was reprinted in North Dakota.  There is a copy of the reprint there.  I blundered around with library catalogs and stumbled onto a catalog that combines the libraries of many universities.  Several libraries had copies, but of only one edition.  Only one library has the 1914 edition (there may be a second copy in Canada). 

Ashley includes Berger [sic] in his bibliography, but only for 1927.  Ashley lists publications by Drew in 1912 and 1931, but does not say which has the Lineman's Loop.  I am impressed by Day's scholarship.  Day has a much more comprehensive bibliography.  He lists all the editions of Burger's booklet and 5 editions of titles by Drew.  This was all done before the Internet with single copies of different editions scattered among various university libraries.  According to the bibliographies, Day's boobkle would be the eighth or tenth work on knots in the English language.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2009, 08:41:45 PM by Bob Thrun »

Dan_Lehman

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2009, 02:01:42 AM »
A few months ago I started to look at the origins of what Ashley calls the Lineman's Loop, ABOK 1053.
Also known as the "Butterfly" and in some caving circles "Alpine Butterfly" (to distinguish
it from a somewhat like knot formed by casting a Half-hitch over a Slip-Knot's bight).
This is a great find -- the book scanned on-line!

I just checked on Wright & Magowan's Alpine Journal 1928 treatment of the knot,
re origin(s):  they write, in clarifying their calling it one of their "new" knots, ...
Quote
These knots are new in the sense that no earlier record of them has been traced.
But it might be rash to claim that they never have been used before.

--dl*
====

J.Knoop

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2009, 08:53:00 AM »
Smart and cautious formulation by Wright & Magowan:

Quote
..it might be rash to claim that they never have been used before..

Other knot authors are less humble.

dfred

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #3 on: July 08, 2009, 07:21:26 PM »
To echo Dan's comment, Bob, thanks for your message and the Google books link.  It's always illuminating to track down the original sources, even in trustworthy works such as Day's.  Though, practically speaking, I doubt I'll be needing a tying method for the butterfly which requires both ends.  :)

I followed a thread like this to the 1931 Finnish scouting knot manual, Solmukirja, which is cited as the first illustration of the Constrictor.   It led me to an interesting and surprisingly extensive early knot book.  If only I could read suomi...

I came up empty in my later search for the Cornell "Reading Course" pamphlet Ashley refers to as the earliest source for the Farmer's Loop, but that was a few years ago and Google and libraries in general have done a lot of work since then.  I should try again.

Smart and cautious formulation by Wright & Magowan:

Quote
..it might be rash to claim that they never have been used before..

Other knot authors are less humble.

Yes, but not all.  I appreciated that in the Quibble(tm) GB quoted two very scholarly, though obscure compared to Ashley, knot authors.   I think it's really too bad some of the most well-researched knotting works have passed out of print (e.g. Day's Quipus and Witches' Knots) or are otherwise difficult or prohibitively expensive to procure (e.g.History and Science of Knots).   I've been meaning to reply to the Quibble thread -- and this comment would probably best go there...  But as I'm arriving to the party a little late, the more I read of that thread the longer my potential response keeps growing in my head.   




Dan_Lehman

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #4 on: July 09, 2009, 06:38:30 AM »
I came up empty in my later search for the Cornell "Reading Course" pamphlet Ashley
refers to as the earliest source for the Farmer's Loop, but that was a few years ago and
Google and libraries in general have done a lot of work since then.  I should try again.
Hmmm, I should venture somewhere around the Beltway for what I thought was
its original presentation (another pub. re rope on the farm, IIRC).

Quote
prohibitively expensive to procure (e.g.History and Science of Knots). 
Unless one adds up prices of several copycat books and figures the real value ... .

As for that first image of the Constrictor, maybe "first published image" -- with
HNG Bushby's notebook drawing of 1902 preceding.  ... SO FAR!

--dl*
====

ps:  Darn, there was something in Wikipedia knots I wanted to holler about,
 but it's not coming to me at the moment; -- came up on some rockclimbing
 chatter, but ... (and might've been re the image).

J.Knoop

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #5 on: July 09, 2009, 07:20:09 AM »
True that Henry North Grant Bushby (HNGB) illustrated the Constrictor as Clifford Ashley put it on the market, but HNGB was not published. The manuscript is in the Mariner's Museum in Newport News. OTOH there are sufficiently many published accounts of the Constrictor's history in order not to repeat them here.

dfred

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #6 on: July 09, 2009, 07:28:15 AM »
Hmmm, I should venture somewhere around the Beltway for what I thought was
its original presentation (another pub. re rope on the farm, IIRC).

I don't want to derail the Lineman's/Butteryfly thread here, but I went back and got the actual bibliographic info for the Cornell Farmer's loop reference and indeed these are available via Google Books now.  I'll be starting another thread Chit Chat for posting of links to old knotting works now available online.

dfred

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #7 on: August 01, 2009, 07:22:08 AM »
I would have preferred to find a scan of the original 1914 edition, but the 1917 version relieves me of any pressure to get a copy of the 1914 edition.

I was poking around tonight and came across what appears to be the original 1914 Rope and Its Uses on Google books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Ju4sAAAAYAAJ&as_brr=1&pg=RA2-PA19
« Last Edit: August 01, 2009, 07:26:03 AM by dfred »

Bob Thrun

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #8 on: August 02, 2009, 12:14:13 AM »

I was poking around tonight and came across what appears to be the original 1914 Rope and Its Uses on Google books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Ju4sAAAAYAAJ&as_brr=1&pg=RA2-PA19

This indeed seems to be the 1914 edition.  When I use the browser I go to the cover page.  There is an option to download the item as a PDF.  I thought I got the wrong document.  When I tried downloading again, I looked more closely at the PDF.  The PDF is a 245-page collection of several documents.  Rope and its Uses covers pages 174-221 of the big PDF.  If you have Adobe Acrobat -- the program theat makes PDFs, not the reader -- you can extract just the report.

Dan_Lehman

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #9 on: August 04, 2009, 04:51:12 PM »
And how does the 1914 compare with the 1917 -- much of any changes?
(Of course, i.p., is the Lineman's Rider present?)

--dl*
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Andre van der Salm

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #10 on: August 04, 2009, 10:00:15 PM »
hmm, I''ve seen this before : In the part of the world where I live I don't have the possibility of downloading these books from Google books. Could this have something to do with copyrights ??

Oh btw "my part of the world" is The Netherlands..Europe

any ideas??

Thanks in advance
Andr

Dan_Lehman

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #11 on: August 04, 2009, 11:34:29 PM »
There was a linking problem from France, noted as:
Quote
Confirmed = same link in both case
- from my provider ( European ) = no preview
- using a proxy hiding my IP (  www.work-surf.info/  ) no problem to get the preview )
Pass along if it helps
So, that might explain things.

--dl*
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dfred

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #12 on: September 09, 2010, 09:11:08 PM »
Ashley includes Berger [sic] in his bibliography, but only for 1927.  Ashley lists publications by Drew in 1912 and 1931, but does not say which has the Lineman's Loop.  I am impressed by Day's scholarship.  Day has a much more comprehensive bibliography.  He lists all the editions of Burger's booklet and 5 editions of titles by Drew.  This was all done before the Internet with single copies of different editions scattered among various university libraries.  According to the bibliographies, Day's boobkle would be the eighth or tenth work on knots in the English language.

I had always assumed Ashley had to be referring to Drew(1912) in the case of the lineman's loop since Burger(1927) would still predate Drew(1931)...

However I just found a scanned copy of the 1913 version of J.M. Drew's "Some Knots and Splices" in The Irrigation Age (Vol 28, No 7) on archive.org, which according to Day's biblio in AKS is a "reprint" of the original 1912 article.  Drew's article starts on page 212.

In looking through it I find nothing on the lineman's loop, so now I'm thinking Ashley must have been unaware A.A. Burger's earlier work (assuming he simply didn't miss it in Burger(1927) -- is it there?) when he attributed the lineman's loop to Drew.  Unless the earlier version of the Drew article has something on the LL not present in the 1913 version, which seems doubtful given Day's reprint comment, it appears Day may be correct on this.  Thoughts?

« Last Edit: September 09, 2010, 09:13:16 PM by dfred »

Dan_Lehman

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Re: Lineman's Rider or Butterfly knot
« Reply #13 on: September 11, 2010, 02:18:37 AM »
 :)   ::)    ;D

Good find, Dave!
Your surmises seem sound, but they remain just that.
Or is there any further indication that 1912 = 1913
"reprint" -- to strengthen the likeliness that just the
pertinent information re the Lineman's Loop wasn't
somehow omitted in the latter publication?  -- good
enough to go on, for the moment, methinks.

Wouldn't it be nice to find some ancient documentation
for linemen in which their knots were presented?

--dl*
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