Butterfly Loop - History

History

The earliest known presentation of the knot was in A.A. Burger's 1914 work Rope and Its Uses, included in an agricultural extension bulletin from what is now Iowa State University. Burger called the knot a lineman's rider stating it was often used by "linemen and especially telephone men". The knot's security and ability to take strain in any direction are both discussed.

The knot's association with mountaineering—and with butterflies—originates from a 1928 article in Alpine Journal by C.E.I. Wright and J.E. Magowan. The authors claim to have developed the butterfly noose themselves while attempting to improve the selection of knots available to climbers. The name is "so styled on the basis of a more or less fanciful resemblance imagined in the form of the knot." In the second part of the article they express dissatisfaction regarding their earlier use of the word "noose", since the knot is non-collapsing, and refer to the knot as butterfly loop or simply butterfly. Wright and Magowan call the butterfly loop "new", along with several other of their knots, in the sense they were unable to identify any earlier record of them. However, they prudently added that it "might be rash to claim they have never been used before."

When Clifford Ashley covered the knot in 1944, calling it the lineman's loop, he attributed its first publication to J.M. Drew but made no specific reference as to the source of this claim. A 1912 article called "Some Knots and Splices" by Drew appears in the bibliography of The Ashley Book of Knots. A 1913 reprint of this Drew article does not mention the butterfly loop.