
Why Women Pretended to Be Rocks and Trees in NYC Parks During WWI - samclemens
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-women-pretended-to-be-creepy-rocks-and-trees-in-nyc-parks-during-wwi
======
krisoft
I was flabbergasted by one of the image titles. "Women apply dazzle camouflage
to a ship in Union Square, New York City." Mostly because Union Square is deep
inside the city, far from the harbors. Turns out the ship was a wooden mockup,
used as a recruitment tool [1]. The more you know!

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Recruit_(1917)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Recruit_\(1917\))

~~~
alirov
Yeah, there was another one [1] built with the same name later. It's a 2/3
scale model of a battleship which is still on display in Point Loma (in San
Diego). I used to work around there and it seemed like they were refurbishing
it recently.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Recruit_(TDE-1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Recruit_\(TDE-1\))

------
rbanffy
"Private Smith, I didn't see you in camouflage training this morning."

"Thank you, Sir."

~~~
Iv
It wont save you

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifmRgQX82O4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifmRgQX82O4)

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int_19h
Camouflage design is a fascinating area. And what's most amazing is that, two
world wars (and countless small ones) later, they're still discovering new
things. E.g. when these experiments took place, it was assumed, on common
sense grounds, that the way to camouflage a human silhouette is to break up
the shape. It wasn't until the 80s that several strands of research in biology
have converged to deliver a conclusion that what actually matters is axial
symmetry, and effective camouflage is largely about disrupting that (but
patterns that disrupt shape well also tend to disrupt symmetry, so they were
effective - just not in a way their authors anticipated).

~~~
andrewflnr
Do you have a link for that? I'm really interested in this area.

~~~
int_19h
It might be a bit of a weird choice, but I would suggest reading the
"Description of prior art" section of the US Patent on MARPAT (USMC
camouflage). It's rather condensed, but it covers the major milestones,
differences between types of camo for various purposes (e.g. hunting vs
military), and has plenty of references to actual studies.

It also has a lot of numbers pertaining to this particular design (which is
considered one of the most efficient modern camo pattern families - note that
the family itself is much bigger than MARPAT, and includes e.g. US Army UCP,
Canadian CADPAT, Russian SURPAT, and many other digital designs), explaining
exactly how and why it works.

[https://www.google.com/patents/US6805957](https://www.google.com/patents/US6805957)

~~~
andrewflnr
Wow, that's as good a history of camouflage as I've read.

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clifanatic
I once heard an interesting story from an older lady - during WWII, she and a
group of other women were enlisted to take shifts standing up in a watchtower
(in Des Moines, IA, of all places), scanning the horizon for invading
airplanes. Apparently, this was common all over the country.

~~~
jonah
And on the West Coast, massively powerful searchlights were scanning for
Japanese planes[1].

The pre-radar location and tracking methods are fascinating to me.

This guy[1] restored one and uses it as an advertising searchlight. I got to
talk to him at length a few years ago - fascinating. It has a _800 million
candle power_ beam.

[0]
[http://www.skylighters.org/howalightworks/](http://www.skylighters.org/howalightworks/)

[1] [http://www.victorysearchlights.com/](http://www.victorysearchlights.com/)

~~~
Qworg
Those two sites were one reason I built my own carbon arc spotlight. =)

~~~
jonah
Neat! Did you write up your project?

~~~
Qworg
We were written up as project 10 (HackSignal) in this book: Hack This: 24
Incredible Hackerspace Projects from the DIY Movement by John Baichtal
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00602MH08/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_udp_api_4...](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00602MH08/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_udp_api_4nM.xbW4Y3XHA)

We never finished our write up. :/ Half done here:
[http://www.hackpittsburgh.org/wiki/index.php?title=HackSigna...](http://www.hackpittsburgh.org/wiki/index.php?title=HackSignal)

------
ourmandave
So I learned a new word, "camoufleur".

Not sure how I'm going to steer the water cooler conversation tomorrow so I
can drop that one in...

~~~
Mz
Very carefully...

~~~
M_Grey
"I think you'll find that vertical integration in this context isn't just
warranted, legal, and prudent... it's camoufleur. Why... why are you all
looking at me like that?"

------
DavidAdams
The article glosses over the interesting rationale behind the dazzle
camouflage on ships. It's not intended, as the article suggests, to make ships
at sea harder to see. That's not really possible since they make a distinct
bump on a flat horizon, but the wild paint jobs make it harder for sailors
looking through binoculars or scopes to make out the type of ship, its size,
or its true heading by breaking up the lines.

There isn't that much evidence that dazzle camouflage worked all that well,
but there'e an interesting hypothesis that cubism, an art movement that was
ascendant in the early 20th century, was an influence on the technique. And it
looks like dazzle camouflage feel out of favor at the same time cubism did.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage)

There's a great 99% invisible podcast on the topic:
[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-65-razzle-
dazz...](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-65-razzle-dazzle/)

------
fungi
... Yoga was a thing in WWI.

------
jlebrech
why isn't Hollywood making this?

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jedberg
tl;dr: They were helping the war effort by designing better camouflage.

~~~
vacri
Does it really need a separate TL;DR when the article's subtitle says the same
thing? That's not a TL, it's just a DR.

~~~
logicallee
no it doesn't. I clicked, and scrolled, and skimmed. I read the title and
subtitle - again after your comment. No, neither the title nor the subtitle
nor any subsection heading or caption make it as obvious as the above tl;dr
(which is why the cousin comment by hackaflocka thanked them). It's a good
tl;dr - another thanks from me.

~~~
vacri
If you can't tell that TL;DR from the title + subtitle, you _really_ need to
work on your analytical skills, which means avoiding TL;DRs like the plague.
How much spoon-feeding do you need!?

~~~
ptaipale
For me, I often can't articles (and subtitles) because my company Web proxy
filters the actual article. I can see the discussion in HN. This title is of
the highly annoying "why this and that, click me" variety which is generally a
turn-off.

Therefore I really appreciate the above TL;DR because it gives me the hint
that the actual article is interesting and I should read it when I get to
another computer that does not have this filtering proxy.

