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Kayak and Canoe Design Bulletin Board
Re: Eskimo rules for design.
Posted By: The Big Legume In Response To: Re: Eskimo rules for design. (John Winters)
Date: Wednesday, 19 May 1999, at 1:33 p.m.
All boats are built to some set of rules. In our case the rules are likely patterns, a table of offsets, a set of instructions and a fixed measuring system. In the Inuit's case the rules were probably more like a set of verbal instructions and a variable (body parts) measuring system.
Now, what is interesting is that if we give 1170 people our set of rules and send them off to build boats, we would expect to get back 1170 more or less identical boats. If we have the same people built 1170 boats to the Inuit rules we would expect to get back 1170 different boats. Interestingly, any one individual could probably build a second boat very much like their first.
There seems to be some speculation, and maybe more basis than that, that the Inuits did use a body-part based measuring system. What is valuable to us is to try building boats as we think the Inuits might have. We may find out that when we apply Inuit rules to European bodies we get poor results. Or we may find out that we get good results.
This is a valuable exercise, because if we do get good results, it tends to confirm that our speculation may have some basis in fact. It also broadens our horizons by allowing us to look at the building process in a way that our modern rules don't always allow.
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