So the other night during D&D, I had the sudden thoughts that:
1) Binary files are 1s and 0s
2) Knitting has knit stitches and purl stitches
You could represent binary data in knitting, as a pattern of knits and purls…
You can knit Doom.
However, after crunching some more numbers:
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…
3322 square feet
Factoring it out…302 people, each knitting a relatively reasonable 11 square feet, could knit Doom.
Hi fun fact!!
The idea of a “binary code” 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:
Here’s Mary Jackson (c.late 1950s) at a computer. If you look closely in the yellow box, you’ll see a stack of blank punch cards that she will use to store her calculations.
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.
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.
Here’s 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’s a nice little diagram explaining how it works:
But what if you don’t 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!
Here’s 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,
and as you can see, the holes (or 0′s) told the machine not to knit the ground color (1′s) 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.
tl;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.
It goes beyond this. Every computer out there has memory. The kind of memory you might call RAM. The earliest kind of memory was magnetic core memory. It looked like this:
Wires going through magnets. This is how all of the important early digital computers stored information temporarily. Each magnetic core could store a single bit - a 0 or a 1. Here’s a picture of a variation of this, called rope core memory, from one NASA’s Apollo guidance computers:
You may think this looks incredibly handmade, and that’s because it is. But these are also extreme close-ups. Here’s the scale of the individual cores:
The only people who had the skills necessary to thread all of these cores precisely enough were textile and garment workers. Little old ladies would literally thread the wires by hand.
And thanks to them, we were able to land on the moon. This is also why memory in early computers was so expensive. It had to be hand-crafted, and took a lot of time.
(little old ladies sewed the space suits, too)
Fun fact: one nickname for it was LOL Memory, for “little old lady memory.”
I mean let’s 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 “weaver yelling at Draw Boy” technique, in which the weaver would call to the kid manning the heddles “raise these and these, lower these!” and hope that he got it right.
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.
ALSO, it’s not just “little old ladies sewed the first spacesuits,” it’s “the women from the Playtex Corp were the only ones who could sew within the tolerances needed.” Yes, THAT Playtex Corp, the one who makes bras. Bra-makers sent us to the moon.
And the cool thing with them was that they did it all WITHOUT PINS, WITHOUT SEAM RIPPING and in ONE TRY. You couldn’t 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’re within an eighth of an inch of being on the line, you’re usually good. The Playtex ladies were working on tolerances of 1/32nd of an inch. 1/32nd. AND IN 21 LAYERS OF FABRIC.
The women who made the spacesuits were BADASSES. (and yes, I’ve tried to get Space-X to hire me more than once. They don’t seem interested these days)
This is fascinating. I knew there was a correlation between binary and weaving but this just takes it to a whole nother level.
I’m 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:
Here are the punch cards:
Some of these looms take up to 1600 spools. That is necessary to make their many different patterns.
Here are some patterns:
How many punchcards per pattern?
This many:
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 Joseph Marie Jacquard gets all the credit for his loom, the operators and designers were for the most part women.
I’ve seen this cross my dash a few times, but I’ve never watched the video before. Maybe I just didn’t pay attention when I was a kid, but I don’t remember ever seeing just how the Jacquard loom works. I just knew that the punch cards controlled which threads were raised. It’s cool to see the how, not just the what.
I am never not amused by the overlap of textiles and technology. Also the fact that a huge number of fiber arts people I know are either in tech or math themselves or their partner is (myself included - husband is a programmer).
You ever think about how unified humanity is by just everyday experiences? Tudor peasants had hangnails, nobles in the Qin dynasty had favorite foods, workers in the 1700s liked seeing flowers growing in pavement cracks, a cook in medieval Iran teared up cutting onions, a mom in 1300 told her son not to get grass stains on his clothes, some girl in the past loved staying up late to see the sun rise.
there are scriptures all over the world painstakingly crafted hundreds of years ago with paw prints and spelling mistakes or drawings covering up mistakes. a bunch of teenage girls 2000 years ago gathered to walk around their hometown, getting fast food and laughing with their friends. two friends shared blankets before people lived in houses. a mother ran a fine comb through her child’s hair and told it to stop squirming sometime in the 1000s. there are covered up sewing mistakes in couture dresses from the 1800s, some poor roman burnt their food so well past recognition that they just buried the entire pot. there are broken dishes hidden in gardens of people no one even remembers anymore
How DARE Tolkien omit in the final draft the information that the traditional hobbit marriage custom is to have unspoken vibes for years and then disappear without explanation for an indeterminate length of time!?
For even older recipes, check out Gode Cookery. They list medieval and Renaissance cooking instructions and translate the recipes for you into measurable amounts and all.
I have have have to mention Miss Leslie. I learned so much about cooking from that book, even if a lot of it is outdated.
Also, Forme of Cury is great fun, if you can muddle through the Middle English (Gode Cookery has translations and adaptions of some of the recipes from this).
The quote by Martha Graham saying below can not only apply to dancers but to anyone who has a passion in life. As humans we love hard but sometimes fall harder and never stand up ever again. We grow bored and further from things we once cherished the most. Human nature is indeed weird and essentially scary.
BTS are known to have this unbelievable affection for what they do. But BTS are frightened by the idea of one day seeing their living dream end or where the passion turns into resentment. They live with the shadows that injected this doubt into their souls and minds…You either live with your fear or overcome it. So what will they do?
The question that many of you might have asked even before listening to the song or watching the dance performance will naturally be “Why Black Swan?”.
Black Swan signifies an insight about yourself which changes your position from one of a victim to a victor. Black Swan is a graceful reminder to move from any position where you feel powerless and at the mercy of external forces; it is time to reclaim your personal power. Swan symbolizes grace and beauty on many levels. It is associated with love, music, and poetry.
And this significance was beautifully expressed in both lyrics and dance.
You might have felt uneasy watching the dance accompanied by the song. What if I tell you it was meant to be expressed this way. It’s meant to make you feel and question things that you brushed away. Make you think and either feel what they felt or project your experience through it.
MN Dance Company portrays a Black Swan and its Shadows. It gets stepped on and thrown on the floor by its shadows. It fears that the thing that one day was beloved will turn into something so bland and insipid.
The thoughts of it alone put the swan in a cage where shadows make it inconceivable to flee.
The Swan tries again and again but there is no way out of this enclosure. When you think about it, how many times have you found yourself detained by your own thoughts, concern, and the unknown?
But the swan/BTS are not ones to give up. They run away from their shadows. And when these demons resurface, the swan is no more bullied. The evil things that once put the beautiful creature on the ground get to now taste the cold ground. They are thrown there to learn who is the sovereign. Yes, BTS now are rulers of their own path, mind, and dreams.
Now that the swan took control, what once was the cause behind the pain is now the motif following the higher reach and success.
The swan that once trembled in the dark to the idea of losing the love and passion can now fly higher and grasp the light. How you will ask? It’s all thanks to the shadows who now rather than being the source of its worry, are the root of power.
The conclusion from this is quite simple. You don’t know the value of something you love until you bear through it. Some things are not meant to stay or last, to be truthful, nothing is eternal, especially feelings. But some things mark the exceptions in life and unexpectedly in our hearts. And that’s music for BTS. They are artists who no matter how big the shadow becomes, their love for music will always fight and turn victorious. Being aware of your fears, vulnerabilities and infirmities can make you face them head-on and turn them into power just like a black swan that sings vigorously “
Do your thang. Do your thang with me now
”.
I hope you liked this analysis and it helped you understand and enjoy the song a bit better. Please if you repost this on another platform or translate it credit me (A simple Credit mimibtsghost on Tumblr will be enough) By @mimibtsghost