Along these lines. Back in the late 1960's A ran across an article about the revival of sailing ships being designed to use "modern" techniques. One was a hollow steel vertical mast with a stainless steel sail that could be unrolled like a window shade. Other ideas were the yards afixed through a steel mast that could be rotated by a motor at the bottom of the mast within the hull or the ship the idea was that 3 or 4 men could control the ship using elect. engines to do all the work. There was suposed to be a German firm working on these ships. It sounded abit like the articles from Popular Science but was in a 16 mm. film Has anyone heard of this???