Richard it was nothing you said, it was in the link I posted, to which I referred. I will look into it in more depth.
As for turning logs on the carriage after cutting the first face, what modern conveniences do you allude to?
I would say it depended on what the boarding was going to be used for.
Did they have an edger of some sort to trim the flitches with? They could have used some with live edges. This would have allowed faster sawing of the log, but in part, limited the use of the lumber.
I can almost see it as today using s4s 2x or finished boards and being left out to hang when we need to use rough cut lumber, it is less refined, some people just don't know what to do with rough lumber. Could the same be said for live edge flitches? You have more options with a live edge but one needs to handle it differently. It is even less refined.