> On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 10:13:30PM +0100, Bob W scripsit: > > [...] > > He won a legal battle a few years ago against a toilet paper > > manufacturer who used a Penrose tiling on their paper to > make it less bulky when rolled. > > They were judged to have stolen his idea, but I can't help thinking > > how wonderful it would be if some junior bogroll designer > had come up > > with the same idea... > > I seem to recall that there are some medieval mosques with > tiling patterns that use Penrose tiling, so someone seems to > have managed it empirically. (At least; if they published > back then, it is not known to > survive.) >
These are from the Alhambra (the one in Granada, not the one in Bradford): <http://www2.spsu.edu/math/tile/grammar/moor.htm> I think they kept this sort of thing a closely guarded secret. Coincidentally I was looking at a tiling program earlier this week, just out of curiosity and because I like Islamic tiling. Whether or not they were Penrose tilings I don't know - I'm not a mathematician - but the authors of this software approach it from the mathematical point of view. <http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/washington/taprats/> Bob -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
