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Why Women Pretended to Be Rocks and Trees in NYC Parks During WWI
- krisoft 10y agoI 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 10y agoYeah, 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)
- jedberg 10y agotl;dr: They were helping the war effort by designing better camouflage.
- hackaflocka 10y agoThanks.
- vacri 10y agoDoes 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 10y agono 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 10y agoIf 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!?
- jedberg 10y agoAt least 33 people disagree with you (that's the current number of points for my tl;dr).
- vacri 10y agoAnd as we all know, popularity Trumps ability.
- vacri 10y agoHeh, it's amusing to watch the karma sink on these comments. Here we are on HN, a community that conceits itself on its intelligence, and we apparently can't figure out that original TL;DR from the linked article's title + subtitle, let alone skimming the pictures or article itself.
- sctb 10y agoPlease stop.
- ptaipale 10y agoFor 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.
- dredmorbius 10y agoThe article title, reproduced on HN, isn't sufficient to determine what the context is. Atlas Obscura tend strongly toward this type of clickbait. It should be strongly discouraged.
- clifanatic 10y agoI 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.
- dhimes 10y agoIn the Boston are the towers are for looking for German boats (including surfacing Uboats). Many are still standing. Some are famous. https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/08/29/turning-world-war-watchtower-into-guesthouse/nzda91VfrUN7ep2E9jrs7H/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/08/29/turning-worl...
- jonah 10y agoAnd 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 10y agoThose two sites were one reason I built my own carbon arc spotlight. =)
- jonah 10y agoNeat! Did you write up your project?
- Qworg 10y agoWe 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_4nM.xbW4Y3XHA http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00602MH08/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_udp_api_4... We never finished our write up. :/ Half done here: http://www.hackpittsburgh.org/wiki/index.php?title=HackSignal http://www.hackpittsburgh.org/wiki/index.php?title=HackSigna...
- rbanffy 10y ago"Private Smith, I didn't see you in camouflage training this morning." "Thank you, Sir."
- Iv 10y agoIt wont save you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifmRgQX82O4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifmRgQX82O4
- theow4444 10y agoFemale privilege at its finest.
- sctb 10y agoWe've banned this account and the others that appear to have been created to violate the commenting guidelines with. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll post civilly and substantively in the future.
- theow4444 10y agoCould you quote what guideline I violated? I answered the question from title, women were excluded from combat roles. I am not rude or anything!
- fungi 10y ago... Yoga was a thing in WWI.
- ourmandave 10y agoSo 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 10y agoVery carefully...
- M_Grey 10y ago"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?"
- pavel_lishin 10y ago> Not sure how I'm going to steer the water cooler conversation tomorrow so I can drop that one in... Once someone starts trying to toggle the switch attached to your torso and wondering why the watercooler a) is not dispensing any water and b) is giggling.
- int_19h 10y agoCamouflage 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 10y agoDo you have a link for that? I'm really interested in this area.
- int_19h 10y agoIt 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 10y agoWow, that's as good a history of camouflage as I've read.
- jlebrech 10y agowhy isn't Hollywood making this?
- DavidAdams 10y agoThe 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-dazzle/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-65-razzle-dazz...