{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "So the other night during D&D, I had the sudden thoughts that:\n 1) Binary files are 1s and 0s\n 2) Knitting has knit stitches and...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/670259201862402048/", "html": "

swords-n-spindles:

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the-fibre-stuff:

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moiraecrochet:

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synebluetoo:

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costumersupportdept:

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butts-for-days:

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dollsahoy:

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isnerdy:

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rolypolywardrobe:

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systlin:

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darkersolstice:

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max-vandenburg:

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eldritchscholar:

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So the other night during D&D, I had the sudden thoughts that:

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1) Binary files are 1s and 0s

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2) Knitting has knit stitches and purl stitches

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You could represent binary data in knitting, as a pattern of knits and purls\u2026

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You can knit Doom.

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However, after crunching some more numbers:

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The compressed Doom installer binary is 2.93 MB. Assuming you are using sock weight yarn, with 7 stitches per inch, results in knitted doom being\u2026

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3322 square feet

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Factoring it out\u2026302 people, each knitting a relatively reasonable 11 square feet, could knit Doom.

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Hi fun fact!!

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The idea of a\u00a0\u201cbinary code\u201d was originally developed in the textile industry in pretty much this exact form. Remember punch cards? Probably not! They were a precursor to the floppy disc, and were used to store information in the same sort of binary code that we still use:

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Here\u2019s Mary Jackson (c.late 1950s) at a computer. If you look closely in the yellow box, you\u2019ll see a stack of blank punch cards that she will use to store her calculations.

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This is what a card might look like once punched. Note that the written numbers on the card are for human reference, and not understood by the computer.\u00a0

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But what does it have to do with textiles? Almost exactly what OP suggested. Now even though machine knitting is old as balls, I feel that there are few people outside of the industry or craft communities who have ever seen a knitting machine.\u00a0

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Here\u2019s a flatbed knitting machine (as opposed to a round or tube machine), which honestly looks pretty damn similar to the ones that were first invented in the sixteenth century, and here\u2019s a nice little diagram explaining how it works:

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But what if you don\u2019t just want a plain stocking stitch sweater? What if you want a multi-color design, or lace, or the like? You can quite easily add in another color and integrate it into your design, but for, say, a consistent intarsia (two-color repeating pattern), human error is too likely. Plus, it takes too long for a knitter in an industrial setting. This is where the binary comes in!

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Here\u2019s an intarsia swatch I made in my knitwear class last year. As you can see, the front of the swatch is the inverse of the back. When knitting this, I put a punch card in the reader,

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and as you can see, the holes (or 0\u2032s) told the machine not\u00a0to knit the ground color (1\u2032s) and the machine was set up in such a way that the second color would come through when the first color was told not to knit.

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\ntl;dr the textiles industry is more important than people give it credit for, and I would suggest using a machine if you were going to try to knit almost 3 megabytes of information.

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@we-are-threadmage

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Someone port Doom to a blanket

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I really love tumblr for this \ud83d\ude4c

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It goes beyond this. \u00a0Every computer out there has memory. \u00a0The kind of memory you might call RAM. \u00a0The earliest kind of memory was magnetic core memory. \u00a0It looked like this:

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Wires going through magnets. \u00a0This is how all of the important early digital computers stored information temporarily. \u00a0Each magnetic core could store a single bit - a 0 or a 1. \u00a0Here\u2019s a picture of a variation of this, called rope core memory, from one NASA\u2019s Apollo guidance computers:

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You may think this looks incredibly handmade, and that\u2019s because it is. \u00a0But these are also extreme close-ups. \u00a0Here\u2019s the scale of the individual cores:

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The only people who had the skills necessary to thread all of these cores precisely enough were textile and garment workers. \u00a0Little old ladies would literally thread the wires by hand.

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And thanks to them, we were able to land on the moon. \u00a0This is also why memory in early computers was so expensive. \u00a0It had to be hand-crafted, and took a lot of time.

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(little old ladies sewed the space suits, too)

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Fun fact: one nickname for it was LOL Memory, for\u00a0\u201clittle old lady memory.\u201d

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I mean let\u2019s also touch on the Jacquard Loom, if you want to get all Textiles In Sciencey. It was officially created in 1801 or 1804 depending on who you ask (although you can see it in proto-form as early as 1725) and used a literal chain of punch cards to tell the loom which warps to raise on hooks before passing the weft through. It replaced the \u201cweaver yelling at Draw Boy\u201d technique, in which the weaver would call to the kid manning the heddles\u00a0\u201craise these and these, lower these!\u201d and hope that he got it right.\u00a0

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With a Jacquard loom instead of painstakingly picking up every little thread by hand to weave in a pattern, which is what folks used to do for brocades in Ye Olde Times, this basically automated that. Essentially all you have to do to weave here is advance the punch cards and throw the shuttle. SO EASY.\u00a0

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ALSO, it\u2019s not just\u00a0\u201clittle old ladies sewed the first spacesuits,\u201d it\u2019s\u00a0\u201cthe women from the Playtex Corp were the only ones who could sew within the tolerances needed.\u201d Yes, THAT Playtex Corp, the one who makes bras. Bra-makers sent us to the moon.\u00a0

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And the cool thing with them was that they did it all WITHOUT PINS, WITHOUT SEAM RIPPING and in ONE TRY. You couldn\u2019t use pins or re-sew seams because the spacesuits had to be airtight, so any additional holes in them were NO GOOD. They were also sewing to some STUPID tight tolerances-in our costume shop if you\u2019re within an eighth of an inch of being on the line, you\u2019re usually good. The Playtex ladies were working on tolerances of 1/32nd of an inch. 1/32nd. AND IN 21 LAYERS OF FABRIC.\u00a0

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The women who made the spacesuits were BADASSES. (and yes, I\u2019ve tried to get Space-X to hire me more than once. They don\u2019t seem interested these days)

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This is fascinating. I knew there was a correlation between binary and weaving but this just takes it to a whole nother level.\u00a0

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I\u2019m in Venice, Italy several times a year (lucky me!) and last year I went on a private tour of the Luigi Bevilacqua factory.

Founded in 1875, they still use their original jacquard looms to hand make velvet.

Here are the looms:

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Here are the punch cards:

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Some of these looms take up to 1600 spools. That is necessary to make their many different patterns.\u00a0

Here are some patterns:

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How many punchcards per pattern?

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\u00a0This many:

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Modern computing owes its very life to textiles - And to women. From antiquity weaving has been the domain of women. Sure, we remember Ada Lovelace and Hedy Lamarr, but while\u00a0Joseph Marie Jacquard\u00a0gets all the credit\u00a0for his loom, the operators and designers were for the most part women.

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I\u2019ve seen this cross my dash a few times, but I\u2019ve never watched the video before. Maybe I just didn\u2019t pay attention when I was a kid, but I don\u2019t remember ever seeing just how the Jacquard loom works. I just knew that the punch cards controlled which threads were raised. It\u2019s cool to see the how, not just the what.

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Don\u2019t hide this in the tags, @drylime :D

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