Uh-huh. I also knew Jobst Brandt, though not as well or as long as Sheldon did. Jobst was a great engineer, both at Porsche and in the bicycle industry, and engineering friends at other leading houses he worked at admired him too.
But there is no hiding that Jobst was as ornery as any Prussian can possibly be, and he was a mean-minded infighter when he had made a mistake, so that getting him to make a correction was a major adventure, only for those with strong stomachs. People tended not to confront him with his errors for fear of his dismissive manner. (I know that for a fact from the private encouragements I received -- from people who'd backed off even when they were right -- when I did confront him about a mathematical error in his book on the wheel. Note the qualification: I know mathematics but I don't claim to know better than Jobst how a wheel works.)
Worse still, Jobst, an American born and bred, thought in German, and German, as we have already seen in the kerfuffle about the Rohloff manual (which I, who have spent most of my life in literature, consider perfectly well-translated), is a language which doesn't fit well into the exuberance of it's wayward stepchild, English.
The upshot is that when Jobst says "pulling and pushing" I don't assume he made an engineering mistake -- he knows a spoke doesn't push -- but a mental translation too close to the German in his mind, and I turn automatically to Sheldon's terminology for a clearer understanding, which, in Sheldon's hands, is usually self-evident, blindingly obvious, even inevitable.
Leading spokes leave the hub in the direction of travel, trailing spokes leave the hub in the backwards direction.
The words leading and trailing tell you everything you need to know. The words are self-explanatory, self-evident.
***
Pavel, if you have to read Jobst's book to understand how a wheel works, you're lost before you start building it. That book is one of the great engineering minds of the last century showing off. (Check out Jobst's brakes for the Porsche Grand Prix car, still the basis for the brakes on almost every high-performance car.) I have no doubt that Jobst is right, and the other writers on the subject before Jobst were at best 75% right, but Jobst's book is also the best explanation I know of why you should let someone experienced build a wheel on an expensive hub or, if you insist on doing it yourself, at least start with cheap components.
On the other hand, using The Bicycle Wheel as a mental trampoline can be most illuminating and conducive to restful sleep!
