How the Invention of Rope Gave Us Modern Civilization

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:24)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:25)

Tracy, you know what's something I've been thinking a lot about lately, especially like this year, just sort of like something on my mind?

Tracy Alloway (0:31)

Could be anything.

Joe Weisenthal (0:32)

Well, probably on everyone's mind, actually, it's not just me. It's just like the extraordinary amount of rope it must have taken for whaling expeditions in the mid-19th century as depicted in a story such as Moby Dick and others. Like, just think about how much rope that requires.

Tracy Alloway (0:48)

This whole episode, an excuse for you to talk about Moby Dick.

Joe Weisenthal (0:51)

It's not, but it is true. But it is. No, no, it's genuinely not.

Tracy Alloway (0:55)

You know one thing I learned, actually, in the course of researching this particular topic, which happens to be rope, the whale that apparently inspired Moby Dick was called Moka Dick.

Joe Weisenthal (1:07)

Yeah.

Tracy Alloway (1:07)

And also Dick was basically like saying Joe back then. Every Tom, Dick and Harry, right? You hear that. So really, the Moby Dick whale was Moka Joe.

Joe Weisenthal (1:17)

Oh, that's right. You know, it's funny. I used to go to a coffee shop in Brattleboro, Vermont, named Moka Joe's.

Tracy Alloway (1:21)

Ah, did it have a whaling theme?

Joe Weisenthal (1:23)

It didn't.

Tracy Alloway (1:23)

But that's a missed opportunity.

Joe Weisenthal (1:25)

I like the way you did that. Apparently, from what I understand, I also at one point went down this like, where did this name come from? I think Dick is in Moby Dick, even then carried the sort of contemporary connotation. Oh, really? Yeah. It was like sort of like tough.

Tracy Alloway (1:39)

He was a jerk whale?

Joe Weisenthal (1:40)

No, like sort of like masculine. Oh, like, you know, like even that it was sort of like that, it even back then sort of was this sort of, that was a masculine name for reasons that one would associate it.

Tracy Alloway (1:53)

I'm not going to say anything else.

Joe Weisenthal (1:54)

That's fine. Anyway, but it's interesting to think, you think about the history of technologies, etc.

We did an episode on the history of nails and how crucial that was to the economy and you think like, here is this one technological breakthrough, some like unlock and then it opens up all of these kinds of things. Whales were very important for like whale oil and candles, etc. But what were the technologies that preceded whaling? You literally could not do it and of course, that's just one example, but there are all kinds of technologies, things that you do that are economically productive. I remember in school, we learned about simple machines like the pulley and stuff like that. But you can't have a pulley without rope.

Tracy Alloway (2:32)

That's true.

Joe Weisenthal (2:33)

No, for real. We learned about the pulley when I was in elementary school, but no one bothered mentioning when I was in elementary school that pulley would have been a useless technology without rope to pull through.

Tracy Alloway (2:42)

The rope itself is the technology behind the technology. This one's an interesting one because I think when you say the word rope, people think of something old-fashioned, like rope is Lindy, just a bundle of cords. But actually, as we are about to discuss, there have been lots of technological breakthroughs in both the way rope is made and also the way rope is designed.

Joe Weisenthal (3:04)

Totally. Well, I'm very excited to say we do in fact have the perfect guest. Someone I've wanted to speak to since last summer, I think, when I came across his work. We're going to be speaking with Tim Queeney. He is the author of the recent book, Rope, How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone Civilization. Quite a bold claim there, Tim.

Tim Queeney (3:24)

Hi, guys. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, that's it's a bold claim, but that's the whole way you have to buy the book and read it and back it up.

Joe Weisenthal (3:32)

What is rope? No, seriously, what makes something rope?

Tim Queeney (3:36)

Well, that's a good question. People have asked me how you define rope, but for this book, I defined rope in a very broad sense from everything down from cordage, which is thin, small rope or twine, or what you want to call it that, up to heavy-duty wire rope, made of metal.

It's all rope as far as I'm concerned, and that's how I went in. But basically, rope is twisted fibers that are then used to accomplish work.