Doubled (or 'basketed') Yale Loups restrain the blocks for runners and checkstays on a modern racer. Blocks have to be disassembled to accept the loops. If a loop is to live in a padeye, it has to be made in place.

For some time, it has been our view that, as a stand-in for a standard 10-inch steel I-beam 50 feet long and weighing 1,720 pounds, there will be, sooner than you think, a piece of rigid foamed plastic that you can pick up with one hand. And the plastic beam will never corrode or fatigue - which means that you could pair it with glass (the world's other wonder material) and build something to last forever.

A bellwether for this world-of-tomorrow view is rope, which has progressed rapidly from manila to nylon to Dacron and now to some of the most amazing stuff ever conjured up.…