alt Hacker NewsIt isn't a hobby of the past. Arborists are professionals still using knots and studying them (especially with the modern rope materials changing the old knowledge around knots). Rock climbing is a hobby but knots are life-or-death for them.
Knots are still being invented nowadays. Or variants of existing knots.
Here are PACI's systematic studies on a few vital knots:
https://www.paci.com.au/knots.php
Here is a recent (2025) paper on the stability of the bowline:
https://www.epfl.ch/labs/flexlab/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/...
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Thanks! Oh I have every confidence we are still studying this, and that it's a thriving field – forgive me for implying that it wasn't.
I was (badly) getting at the fact that back then, as a function of the totality of knowledge we had, discovering a new knot could be quite transformational – whereas now it's just one of many professional fields of modern research. Not implying it was then, or now, merely a hobby.
The number of hitches which come out of the arborist community is pretty mind bending. It's one of my favorite things about climbing.
Tons of tree climbers are pretty experienced splicers as well. State of the art there continues to advance year after year.