Everybody knows what rope is, but everybody does not know how rope is made or of what kinds of fiber it is manufactured. And very few probably know the history of rope making, or how it developed from the simple thread to the great cable which now holds giant vessels to their wharves or aids to anchor them in ocean storms. Let us go back and try to trace the history of the rope. It is a long one, going out of sight in the far past. In very early times men must have used some kinds of cords or lines for fishing, for tying animals, at times for tying men. These may have been strips of hide, lengths of tough, flexible wood, fibrous roots, and such gifts of nature, and in time all these were twisted together to make a longer and stronger cord or rope. We have evidence of this. Tribes of savages still have in use cords made of various materials and some of them very well made. These have been in use among them for long centuries. Take the case of our own Indian tribes. They long made use of cordage twisted from cotton and other fibers, or formed from the inner bark of various trees and the roots of others, and from the hairs, skins and sinews of animals.

Good rope was made also by the old Peruvians, by the South Sea Islanders, and by the natives of many other regions. Those on the seashore made fishing lines and well-formed nets, and certain tribes, among them the Nootka Indians, harpooned the whale, using cords made from the sinews of that animal, these being very strong and highly pliable. The larger ropes used by them, two inches in diameter, were made from the fibrous roots of the spruce.

Scene in Egyptian Kitchen, Showing Use of a Large Rope to Support a Sort of Hanging Shelf.

Reproduction of Sculpture from a Tomb in Thebes, Showing Prep ration of Leather Cords by Process Similar to Rope Making.

Civilized Rope Makers.

All the ancient civilized peoples used ropes and cordage, made from such flexible materials as their countries afforded. We have pictures of this from ancient

* Illustrations by courtesy of Plymouth Cordage Co.

Cordage Manufacture by the Rope Walk Method.

Yarns passing from bobbins through perforated plates in forming of strands.

Top truck used in laying of rope. Forming machine making strands. Closing tarred Russian hemp cable, 15 3/4 inch circumference, for Argentine from shore to shore, a distance of nearly a mile. Twelve of these ropes were used, about nine inches thick, some of them being made of flax and others of papyrus.

Battleship "Rivadavia."

Egypt; in which the process of twisting strips of leather into rope is shown on the walls of their tombs. One workman is seen cutting a long strand from a hide which he turns round as he cuts, while another man walks backward with this, twisting it as he goes. The Egyptians also made ropes from papyrus and palm fibers, of which specimens still exist. Only by the use of large and strong ropes could they have moved the massive stones seen in their pyramids and temples.

When men began to move boats by sails, ropes of some kind must have been needed, and the early ships no doubt demanded long and strong cordage. We have pictures of these from several centuries before the Christian era, and we are told by Herodotus that Xerxes, when he built his famous bridge of boats across the Hellespont, 480 B. C, fastened them together by enormous cables which stretched

Early Type of Machine for Spinning Rope Yarn.

During the medieval and later centuries rope making was an active industry and America was not long settled before the rope maker became active. John Harrison, an English expert in this line, set up a ropewalk in Boston in 1641 or 1642, and for many years had a monopoly of the trade. But after his death the art became common and in 1794 there were fourteen large rope walks in that city. In 1810 there were 173 of these industries in the United States, and from that time on the business has grown and prospered.

Hand Spinning.

In the period referred to all the work was done by hand, machine spinning being of later date. American hemp was used, this softer fiber being spun by hand long after Manila hemp was spun by machines. The hand-making process, long used, is an interesting one. The first step was to "hackle" the hemp. The hackle was a board with long, sharp steel teeth set in it. This combed out the matted tow of the hemp into clean, straight fiber. The instrument used in spinning was a large wheel, turned by hand, and setting in motion a set of "whirls" or revolving spindles, twisted the hemp as he walked backward down the ropewalk, pulling out new fiber from his waist by one hand and pressing it into form and size with the fingers of the other.

Four-Strand Compound Laying Machine Making Strands and Laying Rope in a Single, Continuous Operation.

which twisted the hemp by their motion. The spinner wrapped a quantity of the hackled hemp around his waist and attached some of the fibers to the whirls, which

Sixteen-Inch Towline with Eye Splice.

In forming a small rope, two of the yarns thus formed were twisted together in a direction opposite to that of the first twist. Then a second twisting followed, the direction being again reversed. Thus rope making may be seen to consist in a series of twisting processes, each twist opposite to the former, the rope growing in size and strength at each operation. Horse power or water power was used when the ropes became too large to be made by hand.