So the author is talking in error.
There's WAY too much of that, in knots books.
(And not at all balanced by really good info.)
I thought that the Zeppelin or Blimp knot obviously gives the clues in its name that it is recent. Saw a reference to an EasterN Zeppelin Knot. That is where my confusion about variation versus new Knot started.
Note the purple "n" --that should be the name you saw.
The name and supposed history of the
Z. has been put
into serious doubt; Roo & I (et al.) would luv to dig out the
truth on it. (That 1976 article allegedly reporting one
former USNavy man's favor of this supposed used-on-zep.s
knot was subsequently cast in doubt by one of the then
authors claiming that the supposed commander who
insisted upon it had written to say he didn't know of
it!!)
In any case, NOT in doubt is the discovery of it by
the late Bob THRUN, a caver & physicist, who published
it in a small, local to east-coast/mid-atlantic Washington
D.C. caving newsletter, in 1966 --a decade prior to the
other article, though well later than rumored zep. use.
(Odd that the USNavy has not had any documentation
about it, no --if it had indeed been in use!? The
Speir
knot DOES show up in some military literature,
along with a like-named magazine article of about
the same period (though pointing back to the Korean
War).)
I invented --"discovered on my own"--
SmitHunter's bendin 1977, and since then have *invented* hundreds of
*new* knots (some even worthwhile
), but mostly
they remain unknown at large. In this forum, one
can find many more (and sometimes better organized).
Publicity is a fickle thing, often by some particular
effort or chance (coupled with ignorance or vanity),
and not indicative of merit.
It seemed to me, based on all the publicity over the Hunter's Bend,
that the other knots would be well known.
Heck, one could likely pull many knots right out
of
Ashley's Book of Knots and present them as
new and many people wouldn't know otherwise.
Regardless of that, one can question the value
of *new* based on how many UN-new knots there
are that get no attention.
But, back to "new" :: nylon and other new rope
materials were born ca. 1930ff, and so the angling
community and some others have had to revamp
their knotting inventory to handle the new stuff
--and esp. for angling knots, I think one can find
MANY (most?) of the current repertoire has arisen
only after these materials came into use.
This society has the final or most authoritative say
over what is considered a new knot?
Why don't they have a published list?
1) As Roo noted, the IGKT is not all so authoritative.
(In a Letter to Knotting Matters, I recently chided the
claims given yet again in a recent KM article by "one
of us" about how many knots are in our supposed "bible"
(the aforementioned book), STILL --3/4 century later--
when by now there should be a much better-informed
count. (The ridiculous promulgated count of "over/nearly
4,000" is based on the 3854 IMAGE #s, w/o regard that
many knots are featured in several such numbered
images, and many other images don't show knots,
and so on.)
For a while I ran a new-knots-claims assessment
group for the IGKT, but that became pretty much
a solo job, and the stuff that came in was, well,
seldom anything to celebrate. Newness for its
own sake is lame. After some years, that pretty
much petered out, and is better served by posts
coming here, thankfully. <whew>
Practical knotting is a poorly explored field, I'm afraid.
In some of the applications, one can find good info,
but then less awareness of the greater knots world.
(Me, I'm still trying to figure out how/why re the
yet-published
sheepshank (which I have in fact
used myself, rarely)!)
But perhaps things will change.
And I now have another Letter to KM (or article)
to write, about some other knotty confusion(s)
& explorations (which can indeed confuse!).
From behind the facemask,
--dl*
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