roBats in de skies!

why is it that the bumbershoot is such a gothic form?

while, wikipedia doesn't yeild the exact answer that i suspect, it does list it's known uses a weapon, and traces its origin back to china as a way to shade from the sun. *correction* wikipedia doesn't have much about the word bumbershoot at all, but rather lists it as a music festival in seattle, and refers to it as a "colliqual" term for the word umbrella - after which upon searching you will get the previously noted results. however, what i suspect about some umbrellas, specifically those which collapse very small, is that the design was copied from the wing of a bat. although the umbrella is mechanically more complex than that of a batwing, the design for each arm is fundamentally the same.

that being said, it becomes pretty easy to engineer a batwing, by reverse engineering something that was made by reverse engineering the thing that you are trying to engineer. furthermore, those cheap small umbrellas that you find at dollar stores, are suprisingly easy to reverse engineer.


and the proof is in the pudding (sorry for the video to be so small!!)