"John Rumm" wrote in message
...

the purpose of stranded cable has nothing whatever to do with being wound
on a drum.

Of course it does.

And everything to do with the failure of one strand nit propagating a
stress fracture throughout the whole cable

That is also true, and a benefit, but I would like to see you deploy a
"single strand cable" (or steel bar as we might otherwise call it!) that
can be strung up through the winding gear for a cable car.

Yes I would say that there are two benefits to multi-strand cable:

- gradual failure, where one failure does not cause the whole cable to break

- increased flexibility for coiling on a drum and feeding around pulleys on
the linkage between the car and the cable

Which of those two factors is the more important is difficult to say: they
go hand-in-hand.



It's why electric cable for installation in conduits of a house can be
single-strand (ie solid) but the leads of appliances which are plugged into
that wiring have to use multi-strand wires: for increased flexibility (and
springing back to a "neutral" un-bent position) and greater resilience
against being repeatedly flexed during normal usage.