¶ Rowing Needles (1)
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Index Entry
Rowing Needles:
"I’d like to make good rowing available to the average man. He’d soon get tired then of having an outboard motor and just putt-putting from here to there. But the average rowing boat is a very awkward affair, so you can’t blame people for staying away from them. But with rowing needles it’s easy. Three good pulls, and I’m out of the harbor. The satisfaction is enormous.
"The bows are domed. With a sharp point you’ve got a plow pushing the water out ahead of you. This does exactly the opposite: the molecules roll off and they roll off in all directions and because they’re rolling in all directions they exhaust the cone of entry and it builds up a vacuum.
“Watch a little, tiny guppy in a great tank. He gives a kick of his tail and it builds up low pressure on his nose and it sails right across the tank without any more effort at all. It opens its mouth and builds up that low pressure a little higher and it pulls it right across. I want to really exploit that capability. The bows on atomic submarines are also spherical for the same reasons. As the molecules roll, they take up more”
