
Naval Architects of Lore May Have Been Right After All - protomyth
http://gcaptain.com/naval-architects-of-lore-may-have-been-right-after-all/
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VLM
That would be of Yore as in "long past" although in the grand scheme of
"humans making things that float" its hard to consider this as ancient.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'm pretty sure they mean "lore" as in "tradition" and "wisdom developed over
time".

[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lore](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lore)

~~~
dalke
I don't think so. Then it would be "Naval Architect Lore May Have ...".

The phrase "naval architects of lore" would mean the old naval architects
themselves, not the knowledge they had. While that definition works, it's
unusual. "X of yore" is much more common for this situation.

As a rough approximation, compare the n-gram population of "of yore vs "of
lore", from
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=of+lore%2Cof+y...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=of+lore%2Cof+yore&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cof%20lore%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cof%20yore%3B%2Cc0)
. "Of yore" occurs several times more often.

For another approximation, Google finds only 4 matches for "engineers of lore"
and 84 for "engineers of yore". (I couldn't search for "architects of yore"
since all of the matches were either to this article, or to the "Architects of
Lore" series by Kayara Ingham.)

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mordechai9000
An architect of lore would be one who architects (designs) lore, while an
architect of yore would be an architect from days gone by. The former makes no
sense in this context, IMO.

~~~
hyperpallium
Could also be the naval architects who feature in lore; though naval
architects are generally not prominent in myths, it's mostly warriors, kings,
wizards, princesses etc. Closest I can think of is Daedalus the inventor.

~~~
dalke
Indeed. My example of "engineers of lore" (which now finds my earlier comment)
finds a page with "Doyle plays the whistle like engineers of lore".

Other variants are "The macho, look-at-me, gun-slinging Dallas Cowboys of lore
and legend", "Also, Wendell had suggested that if they were going to die in a
bunker, they better be ready and depart the earth like the cowboys of lore
with their boots on.", "The pirates of lore have been romanticized as dashing
and daring adventurers.", "Worries of cheap labour from Eastern Europe, the
Polish plumbers of lore, burgeoned with the possibility of Bulgarians and
Romanians joining the ranks of those willing to work for lower wages and
longer hours than the local labour force.", "Ghat (pronounced "rat" by
Bastien) was a trading center for the great camel caravans of lore, bringing
ivory, gold, salt, and slaves from the sub-Sahara..", and "These were the
Clippers [aircraft] of lore that captured the imagination through radio shows
and even movies of that era."

These are examples of "X mentioned in lore" not "X who create lore", and where
"lore" isn't synonymous with myths.

I also found "A historic landmark and famed work of San Francisco architect of
lore Willis Polk" at [http://sf.curbed.com/tags/willis-
polk](http://sf.curbed.com/tags/willis-polk) , which is an example of a
building architect who features in lore.

~~~
hyperpallium
Yes, though _myth_ is also related to romanticising, through exaggeration and
emphasising universal elements. e.g. cowboys, pirates, war, police have been
mythologised. Really, almost any story that stirs does so by evoking these
universals.

I suppose naval architecture has its own traditions, a lore of heroes,
conflict, inventive solution and disaster. hmmm the tale of the Titanic is one
of the most mythic events of modern times - and naval architecture is right at
the center.

Does programming have lore? i.e. mythic stories? Figures like Turing and
Babbage certainly have mythic stature, but don't seem quite right. Maybe
something descended from the telegraph operators of Edison's era. Or perhaps
some science fiction characters (like DNA on asking the right question), or
Murphy's Law?

Perhaps we move so fast (though often reinventing unnecessarily) that lore
becomes dated too quickly?

~~~
dalke
Umm, we have lots of lore in this field. "The Graphing Calculator Story" at
Apple, "The Story of Mel", the entire site folklore.org, stories about Gates
and the early days of Microsoft, the "IBM visiting Gary Kildall" story, the
Ariane V exception, Grace Hopper and the moth stuck in a relay (and her
nanosecond wire), the "Steve Jobs at Xerox" story, Stallman's description of
why he started the GNU project, Torvald's first posting about Linux, the
Torvalds/Tannenbaum exchange, the rumors about the CIA wanting popcount on the
Cray and about the backdoor in DES, "Better is Worse", "Reflections on
Trusting Trust", "Always mount a scratch monkey", anecdote collections like
[http://www.dodgycoder.net/2012/02/coding-tricks-of-game-
deve...](http://www.dodgycoder.net/2012/02/coding-tricks-of-game-
developers.html) .

[http://www.filfre.net/](http://www.filfre.net/) is going through the history
of ludic games, including discussion of the lore associated with specific
games. There are stories about IBM's "Black Team" ("more than one programmer
was reduced to tears while having his code evaluated by the Black Team.")
Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine". Robert X. Cringely's "Accidental
Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign
Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date" shouldn't be read as a history book
but a collection of lore about Silicon Valley.

Also, I picked "engineers" and "plumbers" to show real-world examples of non-
universal elements. "Architect" is another non-universal.

Regarding naval architects, there's Bushnell's Turtle, Ericsson's Monitor, and
Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Eastern .. and that's just from my general
cultural knowledge. I assume that actual naval architects have more lore.

~~~
hyperpallium
You are right. (I did at least think of Mel after writing that!)

Though some of those are more industry business lore than programming lore
(maybe a quibble).

BTW: A universal can be an element within a story, rather than the subject.
For example, anti-authoritarianism is a universal concept, and a strong theme
in many of the stories.

Folklore.org - how more perfect a counter to "we have no lore"? Also, reminded
me of the pay-per-LoC one, and the guy who removed several thousand. This one
speaks directly to a technical aspect of programming, as well as being anti-
authoritarian.

~~~
dalke
I feel like you are trying to make a bigger point than is available from the
evidence.

The Icelandic sagas are surely part of lore, do you agree? They are prose
history, and not stories of mythology. It say that Flóki Vilgerðarson climbed
the mountain Hornatær, looked out, and only saw ice, which is why he named it
Iceland.

This and many other stories in the sagas do not try to express some universal
concept, other than being how people lived. They don't all describe some sort
of hero's journey or quest.

I see no reason to imbue the term lore with that extra meaning. Certainly some
of the stories describe anti-authoritarianism. But that it not unique to myths
and legend. Real people can also be anti-authoritarian, so histories will also
include accounts of anti-authoritarianism.

~~~
hyperpallium
I agree Joseph Campbell's _Hero with a Thousand Faces_ is not quite
compelling, but I do find it interesting. Another approach to it is: what
makes stories memorable, stirring etc? Why are some stories forgetable,
boring, unengaging? It has a similar perspective to the question: what makes a
tune catchy? It's not about the story or tune, but the human processing
system, as lossy image compression algorithms model the HVS. Though of course
there's extrinsic factors as in market success: the need it fulfills (e.g.
identification with a particular cultural group), surface factors, fashion,
luck etc, I do think there's _something_ to the story/tune itself.

Getting back to "lore", my last resort is to look up its meaning: _a body of
traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically
passed from person to person by word of mouth._

Not stories or personages at all! For coding, it could include rules of thumbs
and aphorisms like the first rule of optimisation, premature optimisation,
divide and conquer, YAGNI, etc.

The analogous _coders of lore_ might be the implicit originator of those
aphorisms (like the sage of the tao te ching), and attributed authors like
Knuth are just a connecting link.

This would be in a similar category to folk wisdom and old wive's tales, that
often turn out to have something to them, even when their explicit reasoning
is illogical or clearly wrong. It's often passed on because - for whatever
reason - things turn out better when following it.

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rhodysurf
Nice to see OpenFOAM on HN!! Really valuable open source project thats nice to
work with.

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dalke
I thought, and Wikipedia confirms, that some naval architects in 1912 also
used a bulbous bow. Quoting from
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulbous_bow](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulbous_bow)
:

> Although the bulbous bow concept is credited to David W. Taylor, a naval
> architect who served as Chief Constructor of the United States Navy during
> the First World War and who used the concept (known as a bulbous forefoot)
> in his design of the USS Delaware, which entered service in 1910, there are
> earlier examples.

Continuing,

> The modern bulbous bow was developed by Dr. Takao Inui at the University of
> Tokyo during the 1950s and 1960s, ... It was eventually found that drag
> could be reduced by about five percent. Experimentation and refinement
> slowly improved the geometry of bulbous bows, but they were not widely
> exploited until computer modelling techniques enabled researchers at the
> University of British Columbia to increase their performance to a practical
> level in the 1980s.

I presume the experiments in the 1950s and 1960s were done experimentally, and
the later CFDs validated through experiment. The WP page links to
[http://www.dieselduck.info/library/01%20articles/bulbous_bow...](http://www.dieselduck.info/library/01%20articles/bulbous_bows.htm)
which says "Today, to see a large ship without a bulbous bow is a rare sight
indeed. Their results have been proven over countless thousands of deep ocean
miles in all kinds of weather by all kinds of vessels."

Thus, color me doubtful that this CFD run is meaningful.

~~~
rhodysurf
Theres also not quite enough info here to be convincing... Sure increased
efficiency is nice but you have to account for the stability the bulbous bow
provides.

~~~
tawm
Could you elaborate on the stability part of your comment?

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harywilke
Also briefly mentioned, Air Lubrication Systems for ships. Creating a blanket
of air bubbles on the bottom of flat hulled ships for them to glide upon.

~~~
protomyth
Its interesting that a cousin of something used in warships to keep them quite
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie-
Masker](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie-Masker) could really improve
shipping overall.

I submitted another article that basically talked about which shipping is in a
big downturn and any efficiencies might help.

------
JoeAltmaier
The proof is in the pudding. Ask the captains how they handle.

