Page 161 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

A History of Lzfe Support Knots 151
who first climbed the Matterhorn, and Albert Mummery, perhaps the first to
regard mountaineering as 'unmixed play'.
Organised tourism in caves began about the middle of the 19th century;
Mammoth Cave in the USA was one of the most popular. But cave explo-
ration never became as popular as the quest for 'first ascents' of mountains.
~douard Martel, a Paris lawyer, was an enthusiastic cave explorer who did
much to spread interest in caving, both as a sport and as a science. He ex-
plored caves all over Europe, Turkey, Russia and America, a few weeks to a
few months every year between 1888 and 1913. He did much work on the
development of cave formations and on underground hydrology. He usually
involved local people in his explorations and many of them continued after
he had gone. Several women had been part of cave exploring trips run by
men from at least the 1870s, but two American women, Ruth Hoppin and
Luella Owen did several independent explorations in the Ozarks in the late
1880s and early 1890s; Owen's book of 1898 did much to make American
caves known in Europe. The early caving societies, for Vienna (1879), Trieste
(1883), Yorkshire (1892) and Paris (1895) had a predominant interest in the
various speleological sciences, and in exploration and mapping as aids to those
sciences. The sport of negotiating caves for its own sake has never attained
the popularity of mountaineering and rock climbing; most caving clubs retain
some scientific interests.
Rescues using rope must have occurred ever since the invention of rope of
adequate size, but the methods have been restricted locally: rescues on inland
cliffs were made by miners or quarrymen, on coastal cliffs by coastguards or
mariners, rescues from trees by loggers, rescues from bogs by farmers. When
cities developed, firefighters and police became involved in rescues. When the
sports of mountaineering, rock climbing and caving developed, rescues were
made by fellow sportspeople, using the equipment and techniques of their
sports. Local guides and other villagers played a large part in many rescues
in the Alps, and there was usually some regular way of calling out teams of
rescuers; but it is claimed that the first organised mountain rescue service was
formed in 1896 in Vienna.

The First Knots Used
I should state here that the allocation of names to knots by climbers and cavers
is as chaotic as that by other users of knots. Many knots have had several
names given to them; and often the same name has been given to several
different knots. Many knots are named after a person, but there is confusion
about these names also: the name applied is often different in different regions
or languages. I have not attempted to sort out the contribution of each person.
I use only one name per knot, the one that seems to me the most satisfactory.