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 Whitefish Press |
The German Origins of the Split Bamboo Rod...wait. What??? |
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Posts: 420 05/13/2009 08:13 Sic transit piscatoria Clark's |
Hey, maybe we're looking in the wrong part of the world for the origins of the bamboo rod? According to one 1884 author, it may very well have been
the Germans who invented the split bamboo rod. Probably not, but has
anyone ever seen a Thoma or Hildebrand ca. 1880s or earlier German cane rod???
-- Dr. Todd |
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pcg |
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Posts: 2788 05/13/2009 09:41 Admin |
What? No! Impossible! In the 1870-80s the Germans were all reading Nitsche, not inventing bamboo rods!
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 Boo.fiberglassflyro... |
#2 | |||
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Posts: 144 05/13/2009 11:41 |
Germany? It doesn't surprise me. Bamboo and Bavaria...sweet! And a German 5pc rod at that [from the photo].
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Tim Anderson |
#3 | |||
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Posts: 35 05/13/2009 16:51 |
It is unlikely that a German invented the split-bamboo rod. If you want a modern German cane-rod-builder's and author's view on the history of
split-bamboo rod building in Germany, check out pages 92 and 93 in "Split-Cane Rods -- Bamboo Treasures" by Rolf Baginski.
Tim |
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JeffK.fiberglassflyro... |
#4 | |||
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Posts: 20 05/14/2009 10:52 |
As an engineer and technical history buff "invention" is a tough word to get a hold of. Humans the world over have plenty of creativity and many
things have been "invented" many times all over the world. Invention can mean who did it for the first time, or who did the first one that made it
to common usage. Using a steamboat for an example. There are plenty of people who ran a steam powered boat a mile or two on some river, but Fulton's boat
is the one that started regular service on the Hudson and soon after rivers all over the US. The earlier ones can be called inventions, but were dead ends.
Fulton's boat is the one that changed the way people travel. In addition, inventions are rarely a single event and most things do not come fully formed
from a single person at a single time. i.e Fulton didn't invent the boat or the steam engine, but put the two together.
I am not surprised that someone in Bavaria made a few split bamboo rods in Bavaria at an early date, but it didn't start a bamboo industry and was lost to history. In the US the whole Phillipe/Murphy/ Leonard (and others) chain brought about an industry where split cane rods were the standard and their innovations contributed to ongoing craft, and didn't fall away into one of history's dead ends. Then again, who "invented" the split bamboo rod can be a contentious subject because plenty of early rod makers contibuted. Which rod do you call the first? The first with a split bamboo tip? The first 4 strip? the first 6 strip? the first all cane rod? The first one sold? All the people that are claimed to be the inventor of the split bamboo rod built on innovations of their predecessors. |
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Whitefish Press |
#5 | |||
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Posts: 424 05/14/2009 13:13 Sic transit piscatoria Clark's |
Ah yes, a debate close to my heart. As one of my degrees is in the History of Science & Technology, this is a bedrock argument upon which the whole field
is built. As one of my science & tech professors once noted, "innovation and invention are not the same thing." Even the most radical scientists
recognize they owe a debt to the past. After all, perhaps the most insular, least collegial and biggest loner of all titans in the field of science was Isaac
Newton, who paradoxically declared "If I can see further it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants." This from a man who basically relegated
everyone who came before him in his field to the scrap heap, and who was so beyond his contemporaries he basically had to invent his own language (calculus) to
make his theories understandable. Sometimes, too, two things can be more or less simultaneously invented (again, take calculus, which was being developed in
Germany around the same time by Liebniz).
So who invented the split cane rod? There are lots of theories. Perhaps fishing rod manufacturing had arrived at a point where it would not have been a huge stretch that people working independently of each other could have each come up with their own take around the same time. For example, there's no reason why rodmakers in Britain, America, Germany, and even Asia would not have seen the benefits of such a design independently in the pre-American Civil War era. But...it's a fun debate. It usually makes for good fun whenever we try and decipher "firsts" in history. -- Dr. Todd |
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enigma309 |
early bamboo | #6 | ||
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Posts: 639 05/14/2009 13:14 Reclusive! Like J D Salinger |
Bamboo circa 2nd century AD: (Greece or Egypt)
"few or no additions have been made in this branch of the art of fishing in the present day" 
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Gnome |
#7 | |||
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Posts: 2166 05/14/2009 17:07 King of the Gnomes |
And a wee bit further back we have Tchoung Tzu (950 B.C.) And he is mentioned to have written about split bamboo for fishing rods By A.J.McClane in The Wise
Fishermans Bible Page #934 And I qoute Mr. McClane
"The art was known in that country (China) nearly 3,000 years ago. In the book of Tchoung Tseu (950 B.C.) an explanation is given as to how to build split cane "rods" glued and bound". I have read 2 translations of The works of Tchoung Tzu and have not been able to pin it down yet. Jeff |
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findwolfhard |
Invention | #8 | ||
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Posts: 334 05/18/2009 05:01 |
Hello! I guess it was invented in Kroatia! There`s a beautiful town with the name "Split". It started all there!
Best Wolfhard |
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Ken M 44 |
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Posts: 3057 05/18/2009 08:10 Immoderatus Britannicus |
Wolfhard - you could be right but to be more precise it was probably in the small suburb of Split called Kayne.
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baetisrodhani |
The invention of hot water | #10 | ||
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Posts: 58 05/19/2009 15:48 |
Which man, in which country, invented hot water ?
We all know the joke: "He's a nice guy... but he sure didn't invent hot water...!" It would seem very logical to assume, as JeffK points out, that a good many technical innovations have multiple sources, in different time frames. And noticing that cane is a great building material, easily split, and that the strips can then be reassembled to make a new, better tool... like a fishing rod - couldn't that have occured many times, in many locations around the globe ? The contrary would be rather surprising. It's just that it took the culture of recreational fly fishing, typically Anglo-American, to give it its history and its heroes, who understandably were not aware that elsewhere, others had most likely trudged their path... Cheers! Giles |
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findwolfhard |
Split | #11 | ||
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Posts: 336 06/02/2009 03:18 |
Hi Ken!
I`m afraid nobody can tell these days! A proud heritage lost forever! Best regards Wolfhard |
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