From balloon-request@cvs.rochester.edu Sun Apr 30 19:52:08 1995 Received: from swift.cvs.rochester.edu by mother.ent.rochester.edu with SMTP id AA01616 (5.65/IDA-1.4.4 for /usr/local/lib/lists/balloon.archive); Sun, 30 Apr 1995 19:52:08 -0400 Received: by cvs.rochester.edu (4.1/MAIN-MX-1.4.3.2) id AA07401; Sun, 30 Apr 95 19:42:09 EDT Resent-Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 09:38:03 +1000 Old-Return-Path: X-Sender: srjames@postoffice.utas.edu.au Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 09:38:03 +1000 To: balloon@cvs.rochester.edu From: Simon.James@agsci.utas.edu.au Subject: Re: blowing things up (plus History) Resent-Message-Id: <"ZmTUa2.0.bp1.G12fl"@swift.cvs.rochester.edu> Resent-From: balloon@cvs.rochester.edu X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/213 X-Loop: balloon@cvs.rochester.edu Precedence: list Resent-Sender: balloon-request@cvs.rochester.edu > BUT.. simon, you blew up my terminal. (sorta). Just a friendly tip for >folks who send in mail. Many of us have readers that can only handle 80 >characters per line. Anything beyond that just gets clipped off. I lost more >than 75% of your letter. Many apologies for crashing your system, I did notice that my post was somewhat shortened. Suprisingly the short version made as much sense as the long version. A little lesson there (which I've chosen to ignore)! Here is something as a peace offering -- In the Intro document, the "History of Balloons" sections mentions that >Balloon sculpting has only been around for a few decades so there >are still plenty of people around that remember its evolution... >...You can find mention in fairly old books of toys made out of water filled >animal bladders. Bladders apparently expand quite a bit (I haven't tried.) Prior to skinnies being made out of rubber they were constructed out of intestine; presumably different animals would provide different diameters (just like the original condoms). I offer the following as supporting evidence; Swiss Family Robinson (1813) "Papa," said Jack, "can't you make me a balloon with this piece of whale entrail?" Moby Dick (1851) [re sperm whales] "Gasses are generated in him; he swells to a prodigious magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon." Another glorious day for supposition and leaping-to-conclusions :) Simon.