Rope, yeah ROPE!

Rope is one of the unsung heroes of the world of inventions. Think about it. Then let us tell you about it. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:38Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:48Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And we're going to rope you into interest in ropes. In this episode, Stuff You Should Know on Ropes.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had this idea and I, this is one of those where it was a very distinct situation that made me think of it, which was on our trip to Nantucket, when Emily and I went there for the first time, not too long ago. We did a sailing trip on a kind of an old school boat, sailing boat. And they let me, I volunteered to help out. So I was hoisting sails and raising jibs and things. I don't know if that's proper terminology. And I had that rope in my hand and I kind of looked at it. And it was the old school, you know, rope, rope.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Not, not synthetic. It was clearly made from natural fibers and it was braided and very thick and heavy. And I was like, man, rope. It's like, what a, what a undersung invention.

• 2:48Josh Clark?

  Had you taken mushrooms?

• 2:50Speaker 02

  No, not at all. Uh, well, maybe a microdose, but uh, it was, it was definitely one of those moments where I was like, what, what an undersung invention? Like if you polled a hundred people, you would get lots of wheels or maybe uh, gears or fire or sliced bread or the toaster or whatever. But like, I doubt if you would get more than like a 10% unless you work in like a sailing industry or another industry that heavily relies on rope. I doubt if you would get a ton of people that said, yeah, rope, that, that's up there as one of the greatest inventions of all time. But it has touched so much of humanity and the, and the forward progress of humanity.

• 3:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, you make a great point. I hadn't thought about it either. I probably would not have said rope. But Julie helps us with this, I think. And, and I mean, like, if you want to till some like really hard ground to try to grow crops in it, try to do that with an ox and a plow, but no rope sucker.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you want to uh, shoot a, a wild boar from 30 feet away, what are you going to shoot it with? You're going to shoot it with a bow that has a kind of rope. Uh, and we, you know, we should point out that we're, what we're talking about is cordage. So any kind of bundled fiber that's braided together. Uh, that, that's all sort of a kind of rope. Uh, we wouldn't have had musical instruments. We wouldn't have had undersea cabling to make the internet possible. Uh, and then once sailing came around, that, you know, you think about, yeah, big deal. It helps sailing, but sailing is what helped discover the world.

• 4:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you got to think of it beyond the America's Cup.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 4:33Josh Clark?

  So like you said, let's talk about rope. Let's get into it, shall we?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 4:37Josh Clark?

  I learned a lot in this. And like I said, rope is a type of cordage. Not all cordage is rope. Rope is essentially made of different types of smaller ropes bundled together. Like you said, braided, you can also twist them. And you can make it out of everything from synthetic fibers like jute or sisal. Sisal comes from the agave plant. Did you know that?

• 4:59Speaker 02

  I did.

• 5:01Josh Clark?

  Oh, I didn't. And you can make it out of wire, a little bit. You can make it out of wire. There's all sorts of stuff you can make it out of, but the, the point is, is that all of them follow essentially the same method of making a rope that if you strip away all of like the bells and whistles that you have today, it's, they're putting this stuff together in the same way that people put it together from the very outset of rope making.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know, I think that's the other thing that appealed to me was I was looking at this rope and saw the, like an individual strand was frayed perhaps. And I saw how just like human hair like that was. And I just loved the idea that somebody was like, you know, this thing weak, but put all this together and it's strong.

• 5:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's very clever. I never thought about it either, but the way that rope is made strong and stable and all of that is because they're twisted in opposing, like the fibers are twisted in opposing directions, um, held to tension. And that I think the, the impression I have is that you're actually storing somehow some energy or force in the rope when you start braiding it and twisting it under tension.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it creates something uh, that has high torsional stability. So it can hold its shape even though rope is moving around and being tied into knots and it's constantly twisting around and getting pulled on. Uh, and you know, it depends on what kind of rope you have, but you know, if you see these, those giant ropes that they still use to tie in like a cruise ship or something.

• 6:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  I mean, it's still the same stuff. It's fascinating to me.

• 6:41Josh Clark?

  That's right. Let's, let's talk specific jargon, baby.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Let's, I love it. I love some jargon.

• 6:47Josh Clark?

  All of this stuff is cordage, like we said. A cord is a rope that's three sixteenths of an inch or less.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 6:56Josh Clark?

  Use metric TS, it's still a cord. You have to use inches for that.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  That's right. A rope is a rope if it is above three sixteenths of an inch. And then a cable is when you have several ropes that are twisted together. Uh, and these can be made from all kinds of things. Like we said, obviously the organic fibers, you mentioned some. We also have hemp, you may have said hemp and cotton. Uh, we'll get into synthetics. When that came along, it was a real game changer because that provided a little um, stretch. So nylon and polyester and polypropylene stuff like that.

• 7:30Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  And then wire, wire is usually steel. Uh, and you know, we might call something like that a cable. Uh, but it's still the same concept. It's a kind of rope. A steel cable is a, or a steel rope is basically a cable.

• 7:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, wire rope is, is rope. A cable is a bunch of ropes. You can make it out of sisal if you wanted to, a cable.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 7:51Josh Clark?

  And then a bunch of cables twisted together is called a super duper rope.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Right. That's right. Good jargon.

• 7:58Josh Clark?

  So um, let's keep going. Let's talk jargon in, as far as construction goes. You said, um, you can braid ropes, you can also twist them. I'd never thought about this and I watched two videos. The one is, it was a how it's made video. God bless how it's made.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  That was a good one.

• 8:14Josh Clark?

  If you ever run into a written or verbal explanation of something where you're like, what? Go find the how it's made version and you'll see it with your own eyes.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  They've always done a great job. There's a lot, in fact, there's a lot of good rope making videos online. I watched like three or four others.

• 8:30Josh Clark?

  They're mesmerizing.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  They kind of are.

• 8:33Josh Clark?

  There is another one we found called, how do they braid rope? And it's from the National Film Board of Canada, the Boards of Canada. And um, it doesn't even have narration. The only soundtrack is the factory sounds like that really is mesmerizing. And so it's, you see the two different ways rope is made. And the first how it's made one uses twist, which is a conventional rope. And as I was saying, when I started talking, I never realized that most ropes I've ever seen in my life are twisted. I always just assumed they were braided and that was just wrong, wrong, wrong.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. And when you look at them up close though, you can definitely see the difference between a braid and a twist. I love a twisted rope. Uh, this is when you have twisted strands uh, that are counter twisting around each other. Uh, usually it's uh, three strands and that's called a Hauser laid twist.

• 9:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Uh, but you can also have a four strander, which is shroud laid. And that's if you've ever had a rope and then you've seen at the end of the rope, a little guy right in the center of it, running through the core. That's the fourth strand. It's like a little core at the, at the center of it all. Uh, and that is the shroud laid.

• 9:41Josh Clark?

  Yes, and we should say another piece of jargon. You don't make rope or produce rope or anything like that. You lay rope.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  That's right, just like you lay a cable.

• 9:52Josh Clark?

  Oh yeah, I never thought about that. I thought that meant like actually putting it down, but yeah, no, totally.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  So what about the braid?

• 10:00Josh Clark?

  The braid is something to see. Watching a braided rope being created is amazing because there's all these little spools during this amazing like ballroom dance with one another. It's really cool.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:12Josh Clark?

  But they, braiding is where you take a bunch of strands and you, you, you braid, well, you braid them together into an interlocking structure. Usually it has a core and the core can be twisted and have like a braided shell around it. And when you're braiding stuff, you can use way more strands than you can usually with a twisted rope.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they're generally a little stronger and more pliable than a twisted rope. But I like a good old school rope.

• 10:43Josh Clark?

  I do too. A good natural fiber rope that you can't even get your, your thumb and fingers to touch because it's so thick. That's amazing.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Agreed. They've been using rope for probably hundreds of thousands of years. Part of the problem with specifically dating rope is that the early ropes were obviously organic in their nature and their fibers. And so that stuff's not going to stick around forever. We do have some, you know, kind of cool evidence, like 34,000 years ago in the Republic of Georgia, where they saw flax fibers embedded in clay. And so that was like, all right, it's embedded in clay. So it's sort of preserved and these were twisted and knotted up. So clearly people were using rope back then, but there's other evidence of older stuff too, right?

• 11:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, this is like implicit evidence. It's not direct, like finding an actual piece of cordage. This is like where they found a weaving tool, 40,000 years old in Germany. It's made of ivory and essentially it was designed to keep the strands separate when, when braiding or twisting the rope together, which is still a technique that's used today.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:49Josh Clark?

  And then also they found beads, stone and shell beads that start appearing in the prehistoric record 300,000 years back. And I mean, try to wear a bead around your neck without some sort of cordage. You can't do it.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  No, those puka shells are just falling all over the floor.

• 12:07Josh Clark?

  Yep. I mean, maybe you could hold one under your chin, between your chin and your neck, but who wants to walk around like that? Just use a cord.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  That's right. The idea for all of this probably came from early on when they use roots and vines for stuff like this. And, you know, I've got my, my camp up in the North Georgia mountains. There are some trees that have a, like a, like a vine hanging down that like, it might as well be a, just nature's rope.

• 12:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. What is that? I know exactly what you're talking about, but I've never stopped and wondered what it was.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  I guess it's a vine.

• 12:43Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Like it can't be a root if it's coming down like from up top, right?

• 12:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I didn't know if you knew what kind of vine it was.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  No, I don't know what kind of vine it is, but you know, you can, sometimes you can like swing on that stuff if it's, if it's attached, but be careful.

• 12:58Josh Clark?

  Is that, I mean, I guess that's what Tarzan used in the old movies, right?

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. He wasn't carrying around rope and slaying it over tree branches.

• 13:05Josh Clark?

  No. The other thing about rope is that it seems to have been developed pretty much universally, like, like every group, including ones that were never in contact with one another, figured out how to make rope on their own.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:21Josh Clark?

  And then they just used whatever local types of fiber was available. Like in, in North America, indigenous people used sinew, like tendons of say deer. I saw red deer sinew rope making video.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, or hair.

• 13:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, hair, papyrus and reed in Egypt, coconut fiber and bamboo in Southeast Asia. Like essentially you're like, okay, can you make fibers out of this? Yes. Well, then you can make a rope out of it too.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know, like we mentioned, stuff like, you know, to string a bow, obviously, but also making netting to catch fish, shelter to weave together, you know, rope to help like lift up a heavy frame of a, of a hut or something, hauling stuff, lashing things together. And this is one I didn't really think of, but early bridges were made of rope. And so if you want to get from here to there and you can't do it, one of the earliest things you could do is build a rope bridge.

• 14:21Josh Clark?

  I would just not have gone across. I'd be like, oh well, or I'd have to go around. But there was a Herodotus wrote in his histories about Xerxes, the first army in the Second Persian War. I failed to look where this, like when this took place, but this was ancient Greece, obviously. But they apparently bridged something like a kilometer wide strait using rope and their ships to basically stretch the rope and then put boards over these two or three rope strands that were going all the way across the strait to go invade Greece.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Could use a rope. So rope is being used for a ton of things for, you know, many thousands of years. Then all of a sudden around 3,500 B.C., sailing became a thing.

• 15:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  And all of a sudden it was on. Everyone was like, all right, rope is the key to all of this happening. Can't raise a sail without rope. Can't tie up, can't moor a ship or can't anchor a ship without rope. So it's, it's key to what we're doing. And you know, people sailed around for a little while, but then the 15th century rolls around and the age of discovery starts unfolding. And all of a sudden, if you were a nation that was really good at sailing, you could, and they did, you could go around the world and start claiming places as, as your own.

• 15:49Josh Clark?

  Yes. And so rope became a really hot commodity during the age of discovery or the age of colonialism, I guess.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:58Josh Clark?

  There was another industry that came along after say like the, the navies of the world had started sailing. And that was the whaling industry.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, for sure.

• 16:09Josh Clark?

  The whaling industry needed way more rope than a typical like, you know, battleship or cutter needed. Because in addition to all the ropes that like your typical sailing vessel needs, they also needed lots and lots of rope, strong rope to connect to the harpoon that they would harpoon a whale with and then drag the whale around with them for the rest of the time they were at sea. And there was a, I guess in Moby Dick, still haven't read it yet. Melville talks about how the rope was coiled so precisely by like a professional rope layer in the bow of the boat, that this rope that was connected to the harpoon, because if there was any kind of like kink or loop or something in

• 16:53Josh Clark?

  it, it would just take your arm clean off. Like if you got your arm caught in this thing and a whale was rushing away with a harpoon in it, it would, your arm was just gone.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know what? I'm remembering now too, this was another reason for rope because in Nantucket, they had the whaling museum there. And so I went to the whaling museum, which I thought was super interesting. And I've never been more close than reading Moby Dick. Like I'm, I'm right there. I'm just, I'm, I'm working on a book right now.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  The next horror book coming out soon from Keith Rossin, the guy who I've been reading lately is called Crone. By the way, it's great. But Moby Dick is right there. And the thing that really pushed me over the edge is I just saw that Rob Delaney, you know, the actor and comedian, Rob Delaney? He's got a podcast out now called Exploring the Greats, that I haven't listened to yet, but he and a professor named Hester Blum are doing Moby Dick, one chapter at a time.

• 17:53Josh Clark?

  Awesome.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  And I love Rob Delaney. I was like, you know what? I think all, everything in life is telling me to finally read Moby Dick and maybe listen to this podcast as I go along would be a good way to do it.

• 18:03Josh Clark?

  Okay, do it.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  So I'm right, as soon as I finish Keith Rossin's book, I'm gonna, huh, think I'm gonna dive into Moby Dick.

• 18:10Josh Clark?

  You can do it, man.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Should we take a break?

• 18:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's take a break.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  All right, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna talk about how rope is made right after this.

• 18:26Josh Clark?

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• 20:37Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

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• 21:46Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, like we were saying, that ivory weaving tool 40,000 years ago in Germany, that it's essentially like, it's still definitely a part of how rope making was made, traditionally and then still today. But there is essentially, if you were making a rope, say, pre-20th century,

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:08Josh Clark?

  you were following essentially four steps. You have to prepare the fibers. You spin those fibers into yarn. You twist the yarn into strands, and then you twist the strands into rope. Because like I was saying before, a rope is actually just increasingly large ropes, twisted or braided together.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. And when we say yarn, that's a term that you might think of as twine.

• 22:32Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  If you like bought it in a store, we're not talking about like crafting yarn.

• 22:35Josh Clark?

  No, but it counts.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. But maybe think twine. And we'll go over these steps. We're not going to get like super, super in the weeds because we've learned that, you know, trying to describe a, like a process, a factory process with just your mouth isn't the easiest thing to do.

• 22:52Josh Clark?

  It's hard.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  So I would encourage everyone to go look up a rope walk on YouTube. And like we said, there are a bunch of different videos. Just pick one of them. And if that doesn't fancy, that isn't your fancy. Isn't your fancy?

• 23:06Josh Clark?

  Cat fancy.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  I love your remark is just to shout out cat fancy. If that one's not your liking, then there will no doubt be another one. But we're talking about, like, up until the 1700s, they used something called a rope walk, which was a configuration of machines at opposite ends of a long space. Sometimes it was an open field. Sometimes it was a big, huge, open, like barn. But you had, you had a flaming tar pit nearby, which we'll see why in a minute. Maybe you had a water wheel helping out, but it was generally human-powered. And it needed to be long because they were making long ropes. And in order to make a long rope, you just have to walk this thing down hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of feet until it's twisted up.

• 23:54Josh Clark?

  Yep. I mean, that's essentially that. And you have to start with fiber. And again, whatever local fiber you had works. But you need fiber to spin yarn. And yarn is step two. Fibers you have to prepare. You do all sorts of things to them. Like you beat them, you soak them, you call them names. And then you, once they dry out, you run them through like giant combs. You pull them through combs to basically individuate them, right?

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:22Josh Clark?

  Then you start spinning those fibers into yarn. Now you're in the rope making this.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  For sure. So you've got a spinning wheel at this point. You've got a person with a bundle of fibers coiled around their waist. It's hooked to a spindle, and then they just very slowly walk backward, feeding those fibers in until you get to the end of the rope walk. And then you have your yarn. But in order to make that yarn into the strand, you got to soak that in tar, wring it through a roller. And then you've got like a usable yarn or twine that you roll around a, or wind around a big bobbin.

• 25:00Josh Clark?

  Yes. And now that you have yarn, which is essentially, just think of it as a bunch of really, really thin ropes. Right? Now that you have your yarn, you've got your first component of rope. Now you take the yarn and you twist it or you braid it into strands, right? So you take a bunch of different lines of yarn. You pull it through a tube, which smoothes the fibers, compacts it, right? And then you also have it under tension. You want it to be tense. And again, you, a machine basically pulls it down the length of this rope walk, which are really long. I don't know if you said it or not. Some of them are like 1,000 feet long. Right?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Depends on how long you need your rope.

• 25:41Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:42Josh Clark?

  And then there's a, there's a forming machine that essentially separates the yarn. And on the other side of the forming machine is whatever machine they use to twist or braid it. And then as you just keep walking backward, that more and more yarn gets turned into rope, where it all comes together at the center and it's twisted or braided. You get to the other end. Now you have a strand. You do that a bunch of times, then you have the components you need to make a rope.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  That's right. And you're going to twist those strands into rope. Three or four of those strands are going to stretch between a couple of twisting machines. And they have, again, you got to really look this thing up because all of this is possible, of course, because of two other key inventions, the wheel and the gear.

• 26:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Because it's, you know, it looks like a, sort of like a little horse cart, moving very slowly backwards. So that's on wheels. And then you have these gears moving in different directions that's making a thing that all these strands are tied to, goes in a circle. So it just starts twisting it. And you got to have this other thing, though. Man, I forgot about the cone.

• 26:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  This cone that's got these three notches, like, you know, one at the top and two on the sides. Like, if you looked at it from the front, it would be a triangle. But it just runs through those, I guess, cutouts from the cone to kind of keep, keep everything from getting like twisted in a bad way.

• 27:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So on the, on the backside of that cone, which is called the laying top, it's keeping all those strands separated. On the front side of it, that's where the strands are being brought together and twisted into the rope, right? And then again, you just walk backwards. You pull, you pull those strands through that processor that turns, that twists them into rope. And once you reach the end of the rope walk, you've got a huge, long length of rope that you cut. And you say presto. That's tradition in rope making. You have to shout presto when the rope is finished.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really neat, though. Like, when you look at this big, like, rack of bobbins with like maybe dozens of, I guess, yarns feeding through this little donut-like tube to make a strand. And then that all being twisted together with another, you know, these are machines, but it's like the most basic machines you can have. It's a gear, you know, twisting a thing in a circle. So it's like, it's just, I love the really ingenious lo-fi stuff like this.

• 28:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. That's what that How It's Made video features, is a old rope walk. Apparently, one of the oldest ones that's still around is in the Sweden city of Karlskrona. It's from the 18th century. It's like 1,000 feet long, 300 meters. And it's Sweden's longest building.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 28:29Josh Clark?

  Which makes sense. I mean, there's probably not a lot of buildings that are 1,000 feet wide in Sweden.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Probably just the, no, never mind. Bad joke. I was going to say the Toblerone factory. That's Switzerland, though, isn't it?

• 28:41Josh Clark?

  Oh, that was, that was great, Chuck. I love that. There was a problem with this early rope up until about the end of the 18th century. And that was, you were pulling these strands through, and they were all the same length when they were twisted together. The problem is, is that meant that the stuff on the outside was under higher tension than the stuff on the inside because they were all the same length.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:08Josh Clark?

  Don't look too, too deeply into it. Just trust me, that's what happened, right?

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Never thought about it.

• 29:13Josh Clark?

  So that meant that the, these ropes were more likely to fray and crack and in turn break, and that you needed a really thick, heavy rope to make up for that. And then this captain for the East India Company came along. His name was Joseph Hutter, Captain Joseph Hutter. And at the end of the 18th century, he created the forming plate, which is still very much in use today. And it is so simple, and it makes so much sense that I would love to just explain it real quick. Are you okay with that?

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Please.

• 29:43Josh Clark?

  The forming plate is a disc, a flat disc, and there's a bunch of concentric circles drilled into it from, made out of individual holes.

• 29:53Josh Clark?

  The fibers go through each of those holes. And then they all come together at a center point where they're twisted or braided. Right? Well, because the, the fibers going through the holes that make up the outer circles have to technically travel further to that center point because they're being bowed out. They have to go far out and then in. There, that means that the fibers used in the, the outside of the rope are longer than the fibers on the inside of the rope, which means that they're all under equal tension when the rope is finished. And so basically Joseph Hutter made it quite possible for much narrower, lighter ropes

• 30:33Josh Clark?

  to do the job of heavier ropes because they resisted fraying and breaking because of the different lengths of fiber used in them.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Again, ingenious. Uh, Joseph Hutter seems like one of those guys. My brother's kind of one of these guys. And I have the, a good friend named John Wolfe, who is one of these guys, just really smart people that when presented with a, uh, almost like a mechanical problem like this.

• 30:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Their brains can just see it in a way and say, well, why don't you just do this? And that, I think Joseph Hutter might've been one of those guys where he's like, well, you should just do this.

• 31:07Josh Clark?

  Uh, yeah, I think you're exactly right because it's that, it's that basic.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:11Josh Clark?

  But it solves the problem so elegantly. It's, it's beautiful. Yeah.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  But you gotta have a certain kind of brain to think that way, and I don't.

• 31:18Josh Clark?

  Absolutely. I, I'd be like, I still don't understand why the outer edges are fraying when they're all the same length.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  A quick example is I have a, a system at my camp where it draws water out of the creek and there's a propane hot water heater. So we can have like hot water in a sink.

• 31:34Josh Clark?

  Awesome.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  For washing dishes and it wasn't, uh, it was too long of a, of a pull at one point and the motor, I guess, was getting weaker and it wasn't pulling far enough. And I was like, I don't know what to do, man. This thing won't pull. Wonder if they have a bigger one. And John Wolfe was there and he's like, yeah, I'd just get, uh, like when I worked for Coke years ago and we had really long lines, we would just put another pump in the middle. So it would just get to that point and then that pump would pump it to the other pump. He said, you should do that. And I was like, that is so simple. That's either something like Ruby tells me or that you tell me. Cause I would never been able to figure that dumb thing out.

• 32:09Josh Clark?

  That's awesome.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, that kind of, that kind of brain I just really admire.

• 32:13Josh Clark?

  Did you do it?

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:15Josh Clark?

  And it worked?

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Works like a charm. You should see the flow.

• 32:18Josh Clark?

  That's awesome. That's funny. John Wolfe always works how he used to work for Coke into every conversation.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Oh, man, you know, Wolfe.

• 32:25Josh Clark?

  So, uh, is it break time yet or are we still going?

• 32:28Speaker 02

  No, let's take a break.

• 32:29Josh Clark?

  Okay, we're taking a break, everybody. Just watch us.

• 32:40Josh Clark?

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• 33:03Josh Clark?

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• 33:19Speaker 02

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• 33:43Josh Clark?

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• 34:06Speaker 02

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• 34:30Josh Clark?

  That's pretty awesome. And smart downloads automatically downloads videos by your favorite creators. So even if you forget to download it ahead of time, Premium has you covered. So if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  You know, you're never done decorating your home. You know what I mean?

• 34:54Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do or buy or update. The only question is what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly. It's usually a new rug.

• 35:05Josh Clark?

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• 35:23Josh Clark?

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• 35:59Speaker 02

  All right. So we've covered up through the 1700s, told everyone how rope is made. When it comes to the 1800s and the industrial revolution starts happening, all of a sudden we have steam-powered, uh, machines. And so, uh, rope is evolving at the same time and like how it's used and applications and stuff like that. So you need like better rope, bigger rope, longer rope, stronger rope. And all of a sudden with steam power, you could do that. Uh, and, uh, you know, it's basically the same way. You're just using, um, like, kind of like everything with the industrial revolution. All of a sudden you could just do it on a much bigger scale using machinery.

• 36:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's interesting. It's like the industrial revolution changed the demands that were put on rope and that at the same time, it changed the, the ways that rope could be made to, to satisfy those demands. Pretty cool.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Good point.

• 36:48Josh Clark?

  And it all comes down to steam power. Um, one of the cool things about making rope with steam power with a, um, an automated factory, even like this is early 19th century, um, you need rope because they would use rope that ran through the whole factory around like a central steam engine. We've talked about this before and I don't remember what it was in. Maybe diesel generator? I don't remember. But, um, with that, that main engine spun, it moved the rope and the rope ran around and moved these individual machines. It's one long, continuous thing of rope. It's like the idiom says, you need rope to make rope.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a good idiom.

• 37:28Josh Clark?

  I think so too. I don't know what it means, but it, it sounds like it.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Well, they also were, uh, had innovations in textiles at the time. So they were kind of co-opting some of that stuff to make better ropes. Uh, like one, uh, example, I guess, is, uh, they were able to shrink a lot of stuff to much smaller things. So the spinning Jenny that used to be this, you know, mammoth machine, all of a sudden you could fit in a room. And because it's in a room, uh, and you didn't have this like 2,000 foot rope walk, you could like fully enclose that and you could make rope year round and it could be heated. And, uh, you could hire women to work in there because they were, already had experience working in textiles. So now they could help make rope.

• 38:08Josh Clark?

  Right. So yeah, the, the 19th century, the industrial revolution essentially, uh, well, revolutionized how rope is made, even though it's still using the same technique. It's just now, um, the, the work is being done more and more by machines. Right? Well, that's industrial revolution at its core, but it didn't really kind of change the, the types of rope that were being produced as much. Um, one thing that did come out of the 19th century was wire rope. That was a brand new thing that the Germans gave us in the 1830s because they needed it for their mining industry. And now all of a sudden you could grow, you could build bigger and bigger ships and make them out of metal because you didn't need to use fiber rope any longer.

• 38:52Josh Clark?

  You could use metal rope, which people called cable. But again, it's still just wire rope.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  That's right. Uh, and things stayed humming along pretty great until the 1900s came along. And all of a sudden in the 20th century, um, we had synthetics upon us. So, uh, nylon was the next like real big game changer. Uh, when it was introduced by the DuPont Chemical Company in 1939 as toothbrush bristles. When people were like, hey, if you make these super long and they're not just for toothbrushes, uh, you can, we can make this into rope and I think it'll be stronger. I think it'll be stretchier.

• 39:30Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  And within a couple of years, uh, and it's, you know, World War II definitely helped when they had blocked, um, like using raw materials for rope making. So that's when nylon really had a chance to shine.

• 39:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And then shortly after that, polypropylene and polyester followed too. And so synthetics were basically, everybody was like better living through chemistry uh, in the second half of the 20th century. And that certainly applied to rope making too. And it's still around today. I mean, like synthetics are, um, you can find both natural fiber rope and synthetic rope as well. But, um, just because of the kind of operations that you see in modern rope making facilities and factories.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 40:11Josh Clark?

  It just, it'd be almost weird to see somebody make a fiber rope in one of the modern factories. Like synthetic nylon and other kinds of material ropes just make sense.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And the process is really similar because you're still physically doing the same thing. But in this case, you're starting out instead of, you know, like, long fibers that you're running through with a steel comb, you're starting out with pellets that came from processed crude oil, like little, little rice-sized pellets of like, you know, nylon, let's say. And then you got to melt those down in an extruder and push it through, like, smaller and smaller nozzles until you get down to the diameter of a hair, let's say. And then you have this long filament, and you know, you have to put it in a cooling bath, and so it holds a shape and stuff like that. You stretch it out some on some rollers.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Apparently, the stretching causes the polymer chains to align, which is really going to strengthen it. But after that, aside from having to treat it a little differently, it's kind of the same process as an old rope walk and then a factory, as far as twisting the stuff together.

• 41:22Josh Clark?

  Exactly, except that these are done by machines that can spin at like, 1,000 RPMs as they're twisting these things. It can make rope super fast. They do that with yarn, and then on to strands, and then on to rope. And yeah, it's essentially the same stuff. Again, back to that 40,000-year-old ivory weaving tool. And but, once you have the rope made, then it kind of jumps back into modern, the modern era, because you have to do things with nylon rope that you don't have to do with fiber rope, which is like, you have to heat-set it with steam. That helps keep those polymers locked in that same direction. They test them. I'm sure they do this with modern fiber ropes, too. But they, they stretch

• 42:06Josh Clark?

  them. They jump on them. They beat them up. They do all sorts of stuff. And they have sensors that detect what's going on within the rope. And then, once the rope passes some sort of certification, its maximum operating capacities are stamped on the label, and it's coiled up and sold.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about a few specific kinds of rope, because it gets, depending on what you need to do, you might need a rope that's like, stretchier, or, I don't know, stiffer, let's say. So, if you, if you want to talk about shock cord, that is bungee cord. And that is, you know, if, I've never bungee jumped, but I did learn at one point that a bungee cord was just a lot of rubber bands twisted into a rope. And I don't know if that made me feel better or worse about the whole process.

• 42:59Josh Clark?

  Well, yeah, so this is, it's silicone, to begin with silicone rubber, and it's vulcanized. And usually, they're made of 16 different strands. And then that's just the core. There's a synthetic fiber shell that goes around the cord. And, yeah, I think shock cords are pretty, pretty reliable, for the most part. They apparently stretch to about 130% of their original length, and then bend and snatch back to their original length, again, without being mauled.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Without breaking?

• 43:35Josh Clark?

  Sure. Or without losing their elasticity.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, I see what you mean.

• 43:40Josh Clark?

  That's what I mean.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Well, eventually, they do, over time, though, I guess, because just using regular bungee cords around the house, like, old, old ones, aren't as stretchy as they used to be.

• 43:48Josh Clark?

  Good point. And you probably want to, you go bungee jump at a place that's reputable enough that they're not overusing their bungee cords.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 43:56Josh Clark?

  Great point.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  You've also got spot cord, and that is not, not super strong or anything, but it has a high resistance to snags. And the cool thing about spot cord, it's a, it's a cotton rope that's braided, and it's been produced by the Samson Cordage Company for about 150 years. And if you go to like, a big-box hardware store or something, and you just get like, a little 50-foot, small, thin rope, it's probably a spot cord.

• 44:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they feel real nice, because they're cotton.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:27Josh Clark?

  If you've ever used a clothesline that's not wire?

• 44:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go.

• 44:31Josh Clark?

  It's probably a spot cord.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you've ever tied up your neighbor to a chair? Probably using spot cord, if you're not into the duct tape thing.

• 44:40Josh Clark?

  And came into the room saying, "Well, well, well. Look how the tables have turned."

• 44:46Speaker 02

  That's right. I hope that comes across as a joke. I know, I'm sure, that's real-world violence. Although, you could just be tying them to a chair to make them watch The Simpsons or something. Let's say, that's what I was talking about.

• 44:56Josh Clark?

  Okay. And then, another special rope, and these are very special ropes, by the way, it's the lariat. And lariat is the correct term for what a lot of people call lassos. But I looked it up, Chuck. Lasso is a verb, and it's what you do with a lariat, which is a noun.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You, you lasso a horse or something?

• 45:20Josh Clark?

  Yes, exactly. And you and I both have our own lariats. Do you remember Kathy with the K in Phoenix gave them to us at the Phoenix show?

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Kathy, I thought it was Denver, but was it Phoenix?

• 45:28Josh Clark?

  Phoenix.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, I still have mine. It's hanging up at the camp.

• 45:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I can't tell you how many steer I've wrestled with mine already.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  These are traditionally made with horsehair or rawhide. Today, they're usually braided with nylon or polyester, maybe. But the key to this thing is, is that it's stiff. Like I said, sometimes you might need a stiff rope. So, you know, if you've never used a, or tried to lasso something, you might be surprised to know that it's a, it's a, you know, it's stiff. It's very stiff.

• 46:00Josh Clark?

  Super stiff. And it barely fits in your suitcase from Phoenix back home to Atlanta.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  I know. We managed it, though.

• 46:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the way they work, though, is a Honda knot, which slides up and down the rigid rope or stiff rope very easily. So when you get it around a steer's horns, you pull it, and the loop closes. But it doesn't close midair on your way, on its way to the steer's horns like it would if you made it out of a spot cord.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 46:28Josh Clark?

  There's also, we can't not talk about climbing ropes, Chuck.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's what keeps you alive, if you're into rappelling and rock climbing. They used to be made out of plant fibers before nylon, just like any other rope that we're talking about, of course. But, you know, if, if you've seen an action movie from the old days, and that rope is, is being, you know, wearing against that rock at the top of a cliff, and it starts going, "Ding, ding, ding," and you're worried about your action hero, then you need to go to a nylon rope, because one of the important things about a nylon rope is it's not going to fray as much, like in the movie. And also, if you fall, it's going to be a little stretchier. So in the old days, if you fell, like, off

• 47:14Speaker 02

  of Everest in the, in the old days with a fiber rope, like, the entire force of falling is just stops in an instant, because there's zero stretch, and that's no good.

• 47:23Josh Clark?

  No, that produces rope trauma.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Ah, very nice.

• 47:28Josh Clark?

  It can cut you just clean in half.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  That's what I've heard.

• 47:32Josh Clark?

  So, with climbing ropes in particular, there's a special type of rope construction that's used, called the Kern Mantle Construction. And it refers to the Kern, the core, like a kernel. And that's made of nylon rope. And then there's a mantle, the shell, that is made of braided nylon, that protects the internal nylon rope. So the internal Kern rope is load-bearing. The outer shell rope protects that internal load-bearing one. But because they're both so strong, if one failed, the other would be able to keep you dangling. And they're stretchy enough that rope trauma is brought to almost nil, the possibility of it, when you fall off of a cliff, wearing a Kern Mantle rope.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  That's right. And they came around in 1953.

• 48:21Josh Clark?

  Yep, the aughts.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  And I guess that's kind of it on rope, right?

• 48:25Josh Clark?

  That's it. One thing that struck me, I could not find a, an answer for, is that in the United States alone, in 2025, $3.5 billion worth of rope was sold. Pretty impressive. But they're projecting it to increase to $6 billion in less than 10 years, by 2033. I could not find why.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  What do we need more rope for?

• 48:50Josh Clark?

  I don't know. Maybe Gen Z is going to finally discover rope in 2033? I don't know.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  I don't know. I'm trying to think of how like, a data center uses rope or something that's like, something really, like, growing fast right now, but I don't.

• 49:04Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. I guess maybe if you include fiber optic cable, or fiber optic rope, I should say, in, in that, that might account for it. Good call. Well, that's it for rope, everybody, which means it's time for listener mail.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  This goes back to the voice of God, Dan LaFontaine, the famous movie trailer guy in a world that we did a, what did it say, Dan? No, that was his brother. You should have heard his voice. Hey, guys. Don LaFontaine, I think we did a shorty on him. Weren't we in a shorty?

• 49:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, voice of God.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  So, "Hey, guys, been meaning to write for a while. And when I heard this short stuff, I was like, bam, now I have to write. Because my father was a sound editor in New York City and worked on movie trailers. The sound mixes for them and recording the voiceovers. He met many actors over the years, and also, Don LaFontaine, who became a good friend of our family. When my younger brother Travis was born in 1971, Don became his godfather, even. My mother loved Don, and was always said he was such a neat guy, and fun. And they spent some time partying with him back in the day. I have some old pictures of Don and my parents, those little square ones with the rounded-off corners, where everything looks like shades of brown and orange and yellow. You know the ones,

• 50:20Speaker 02

  guys. If, and like, if I can lay my hands on one, I'll attach it, which did not happen, by the way. But I'd be tickled to death if you selected my email to be read on the air. Like, you have no idea, lol. You can even edit down, and I won't mind. Smiley face. Yours, both of yous, truly." That is from Tegwin Allen Stockdale, or the nickname "Teg."

• 50:44Josh Clark?

  What a name. That is a great name.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 50:47Josh Clark?

  Well, thanks a lot, Tegwin Allen Stockdale. I don't think I would ever say your name other than to use all three.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 50:55Josh Clark?

  Oh, great. If you want to be like Tegwin Allen Stockdale, and email us with a great story about something we talked about, we love that kind of thing, you can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to [email protected].

• 51:12Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 51:28Josh Clark?

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• 52:09Josh Clark?

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• 53:01Speaker 06

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