I received a DM from
@Brocky yesterday, which said the following…
"Your post #53 about Jason Blake coming up with the same hitch is contradicted by Chris’ post #39. Dan Lehman theorized that Blake hadn’t also originated the hitch and came up with the ProhGrip name."
@Brocky has pointed out the fact that
@chris_girard claims Jason Blake learned about the Blake’s hitch from some other, unknown individual, and that he did not discover it independently…which is contrary to what I stated in my post based off of an online reference.
Here is the relevant excerpt from post #39, made by
@chris_girard and the link to the post…
Old Timers - Was The Blakes Hitch Pretty Cool When Released? - https://www.masterblasterhome.com/threads/old-timers-was-the-blakes-hitch-pretty-cool-when-released.29390/post-1163105
"I just found out recently from Don Blair that he actually named the Blake's Hitch for Jason. Apparently, he was talking to Jason Blake when Blake first started climbing on the hitch (which Blake had learned from someone else). He was telling Don how he was going to make a VHS tape of how to tie and climb on the hitch (which you can find online) but couldn't think of a good name."
Here is the relevant excerpt from my post #52 (by me,
@Knotorious) and the link to the post…
Old Timers - Was The Blakes Hitch Pretty Cool When Released? - https://www.masterblasterhome.com/threads/old-timers-was-the-blakes-hitch-pretty-cool-when-released.29390/post-1163105
"Separately, Jason Blake discovered the knot for himself and presented it to the arborist community in a letter to Arbor Age in 1994, after which it was enthusiastically adopted by arborists. It has since become well known under the name "Blake's hitch"."
NOTE: The reason I stated that Jason Blake “discovered the knot for himself” was because that is what was written on the Wikipedia page for the Blake’s hitch.
You can find that claim from Wikipedia by following this link below…
en.wikipedia.org
Because I love research, and because I STRONGLY value providing factual, and accurate, information to anyone, and everyone, at all times, always, I have done some additional research in hopes of disambiguating this apparent “contradiction.”
After much investigation using Google’s search engine, I came across a downloadable PDF for a written work called
Son of a Hitch: A Geneology of Arborists’ Climbing Hitches. In this article, there is a segment all about Blake's hitch and it reads as follows…
(You can download the full PDF for this article at the following link: https://www.treebuzz.com/pdf/0505_geneology.pdf)
After reading this additional resource, it seems readily apparent that Wikipedia
has it wrong and that @crhis_girard’s anecdotal evidence, which suggests that Jason Blake had learned about the hitch from someone else, and did not originate it himself,
is factually accurate.
It appears that Blake is credited with popularizing and spreading awareness of the hitch, as well as naming the hitch so that it mirrored his surname. However, this article contradicts the claim that he discovered the knot independently himself sometime shortly after Pohaska.
Epic New Information Regarding the History and Origination of the Blake's Hitch...
What’s way more interesting to me is that this article states that Prohaska was NOT the first to publish the Blake's hitch knot. This article claims that Clifford Ashley shows a two-coil version of this knot (1944, p. 266, ABOK #1470) in his Ashley Book of Knots, but does not name it.
This rabbit hole went deep, but I feel like I got to the bottom of it. You're welcome! =-D
