Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2022 December 7

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December 7

Who invented the modern skateboard wheel?

Working on answering a patron's question, I found apparent conflicting information in two Wikipedia articles. Frank Nasworthy claims that Nasworthy was the first to use urethane/polyurethane wheels on skateboards. Powell Peralta claims that Powell cooked up urethane wheels himself because he realized they would be good skateboard wheels. Without nitpicking the differences between urethane and polyurethane, is there an inventor of the urethane skateboard wheel? 97.82.165.112 (talk) 19:01, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

The Smithsonian Institution credits him with adding polyurethane wheels to skateboards. He did not invent the wheel itself; the wheels he used were factory rejects from a local plastics factory; the wheels had been used on roller skates already. He was the first to put them on a skateboard... He later contracted with the same factory to produce wheels of his own design, being the first to design and produce a specific wheel for skateboards made out of polyurethane as well. So there you go. --Jayron32 19:52, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

According to several sources, Hobie Alter proposed the use of urethane wheels for the "Hobie Skateboards" as early as 1965, but the company producing and marketing them did not consider this a commercially viable proposition.^[1]  --Lambiam 20:33, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

After more research, I have found that Nasworthy took rollerskate wheels and put them on skateboards. Powell saw urethane wheels and worked on the production process to make wheels specifically for skateboarding and invented the "bones" wheels that were not simply rollerskate wheels on a skateboard. So, each had some part in the overall process. Thanks. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 23:42, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Discord

I am trying to log into the Discord Wikipedia server, but I am having issues. I know my email, phone number, and password, but I can't seem to get in. When I try logging in with email, it asks for a phone number, which says it is taken. When I try logging in with my phone number, it asks for an email, which says it is taken. Can you help me figure out what is going on and how to fix it? Thanks, Interstellarity (talk) 20:28, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

@interstellarity: i think you clicked sign up instead of log in. lettherebedarklight晚安 06:17, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

@Lettherebedarklight: I got a message that says unable to accept invite. Interstellarity (talk) 12:22, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Contact support.discord.com - you might have accidentally made another account before with your phone number, and because of an issue with the spam detection algorithm, you've reached the "Something's going on here" screen (or similar) and it wants you to verify your account. Ask Discord if they can remove your phone number from whatever account it's associated with, then you can put it back on your normal account. Among Us for POTUS (talk) 20:39, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Interstellarity (talk) 00:03, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Photography and modern art

Was the technology of photography directly responsible for the emergence of modern art? The dates all line up. The first fixed images and monochrome processes led to the emergence of writers and philosophers talking about how art should reflect real life just like the early photographs they were seeing. The Barbizon school, which Impressionism emerged from, sought to do this by going back to nature; the Impressionists went beyond mere landscapes and depicted real human activity in a natural context merging the two together. This seems analogous to the democratization of knowledge that we see from technologies like the printing press, which opened access to books to everyone; what we see here, however, is the democratization of subject matter and style, formerly tightly constrained and controlled by academic art, loosened and set free by the new technology of photography, which influenced artists to try and match what the camera was showing them, leading directly to what we now call modern art. How close am I to the truth? Viriditas (talk) 22:59, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Update: in lieu of reinventing the wheel, I just found out that this is the thesis of Paloma Alarcó of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in her book The Impressionists and Photography (2019). Viriditas (talk) 23:43, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

It's a common thesis that since visual artists could no longer compete with photography in terms of verisimilitude, they turned to other forms of representation, of which impressionism came first, but was then followed by other movements such as pointilism, fauvism, cubism and constructivism, among others, and eventually pure abstraction. Which in turn created its own backlash with hyper-realism being an attempt to compete with photography. Here's another interesting article on the topic [2]. However, impressionism was also inspired by earlier schools of more realistic painting that had taken the artist to paint directly outdoors, instead of making sketches on location and then producing the finished work in the studio. So there was more to it then just abandoning straight representation - there was also a lot of work on capturing the more ephemeral effects of light on nature. Xuxl (talk) 16:47, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers; I really appreciate it. The reason I started this discussion is because I couldn't find anything about the relationship (and feedback loop) between photography and art on Wikipedia. It would be nice to have an article devoted to the topic. Viriditas (talk) 20:17, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Influences from the new technique of photography are evident in impressionist paintings such Paris Street; Rainy Day (1887) by Gustave Caillebotte (limited depth of focus, edge cropping of figures and wide-angle lens perspective) and the comparable Rainy Day, Boston (1885) by Childe Hassam. Philvoids (talk) 01:51, 10 December 2022 (UTC)