JUMPING FOR JOY

The origin of the trampoline is just the kind of story we love at the BRI: one man’s dream and persistence creates something that millions of people have benefited from,

SKIN-SPIRATION

As a typical teenage boy in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the 1920s, George Nissen loved the circus. He was most fascinated with the acrobats—the way they would gracefully fall into the large nets from the high wire, sometimes doing amazing tricks and twists as they bounced. Nissen also loved vaudeville acts. One of the gags he liked best was the springboard. A man would be pushed off the stage into the orchestra pit, only to “magically” bounce back up onto the stage. He wanted to do that! When Nissen read in a high school textbook that Eskimos sometimes stretched walrus skins between stakes in the ground and then bounced up and down on them just for fun, that did it—he decided to make his own “jumping table.”

Still in high school, Nissen started his project in 1926. He scavenged materials from the local dump and tinkered away in his garage…for 10 years. In that time he had become a world-class tumbler, winning the national championship three times in a row, from 1935 to 1937. It was around this same time that Nissen was putting the final touches on his new invention. With the assistance of a local gymnastics coach named Larry Griswold, Nissen used rails from a bed, some strips of inner tube, tightly wound rope, and canvas to build his first jumping table. He called it the trampoline, from the Spanish word trampolín, which means “springboard.” They took it to the local YMCA, where Nissen worked as an instructor to test-market it. The kids loved it—they stood in long lines for a chance to jump on the new contraption.

BOUNCING BACK

The trampoline became so popular in Cedar Rapids that Nissen began mass-producing them in 1938. One problem: No one bought them. Why? Nissen believed that even though the trampoline intrigued them, people saw it as something only for circus performers. So he strapped a trampoline to the top of his car and took off cross-country, giving exhibitions anywhere a crowd was gathered— schools, fairs, playgrounds, and sporting events.

Taking a lesson from circus legend P. T. Barnum, Nissen taught a kangaroo to jump on a trampoline. He trained it using dried apricots as treats and quickly learned that the best way to avoid getting kicked was to “hold hands” with the kangaroo’s front paws. A photograph of man and beast high in the air was printed in newspapers all over the country—exactly the publicity Nissen wanted. It brought the crowds out, and sure enough, sales improved.

Then when World War II started, Nissen convinced the U.S. Army that trampolines could train pilots not only to achieve better balance, but also to be less fearful of being upside down. And jumping on a trampoline was great for physical conditioning. The military agreed; thousands of cadets learned to jump on trampolines.

IT’S A FAD!

Still, even after the war, trampolines were mostly found at gymnasiums, primarily used by athletes. Then, in the late 1950s, a new fad emerged: trampoline centers. Here’s what Life magazine said about it in May 1960:

All across the nation the jumping business is jumping, and a device called the trampoline, once a tool of tumblers, has overnight become a popular plaything. Matrons trying to reduce, executives trying to relax and kids trying to outdo each other are plunking down 40¢ for a half hour of public bouncing at trampoline centers which are spreading the way miniature golf courses spread several decades ago.

And trampolining wasn’t just for the average person. Nissen boasted that “Vice President Richard Nixon, Yul Brynner, the Rockefellers, and King Farouk” were all avid jumpers as well.

But while Nissen was pleased that his invention was finally catching on, he was very critical of the trampoline centers. Profiteers, he said, were just buying the trampolines and allowing patrons to jump unsupervised. Many of the jumpers were either inept or intoxicated. After a few high-profile injuries (a beauty queen lost her teeth and a high school football star was paralyzed), the centers started folding. Nissen tried opening his own properly supervised centers, called Jumpin’ Jiminy. But it was too late—the injuries had given trampolines a bad name.

IT’S A SPORT!

When Nissen saw the interest in trampolines start to dwindle, he understood why. “You have to have programs,” he said. “I bounce too, but if I didn’t have something new to do on a trampoline, I would lose interest.”

So he set his sights on turning trampolining into a sport. First he tried “Spaceball,” a combination of jumping and volleyball, but that turned out to be too dangerous. He also tried combining trampo-lining and running by putting little bounce pads at either end of a track, but that didn’t catch on, either.

Then Nissen met a Swiss economist in California named Kurt Baechler, who also happened to be a gymnast. Together they combined trampolining with gymnastics, creating the sport Nissen was looking for. They organized the Nissen Cup trampoline competition, formed the International Trampoline Federation, and financed the first Trampolining World Championships in the Royal Albert Hall in London. As the trampoline center fad gave way to hula hoops and pinball arcades, the sport of trampolining started taking off.

Today, trampolines can be found in backyards worldwide. And the Nissen company is still a major manufacturer of gymnastics equipment and trampolines. George Nissen held 35 patents on sports and fitness equipment (including the seat cushion that protects your bottom from rock-hard bleacher seats). At 83 years old, Nissen won California’s Senior Fitness Award. And he finally achieved his goal of having competitive trampolining—the idea he came up with when he was 19 years old—recognized as a real sport. It became an Olympic event in 2000; eight years later, at 94 years old, Nissen traveled to the summer Olympics in Beijing and was given the honor of testing out the trampoline. It worked fine.

He died a happy man in 2010.

BOUNCY FACTS

• Jeff Schwartz of Illinois bounced on a trampoline for 266 hours, 9 minutes in 1981, setting a world record. He was allowed breaks for eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom.

• Another world record was set in 1999 when 20 people in West York, United Kingdom, did 29,503 somersaults in five hours using two trampolines. That’s about 1,500 somersaults…per person.

• Bounce carefully! The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that in 2012 “there were 94,900 emergency room–treated injuries associated with trampolines…and a total of 22 deaths between 2000 and 2009.”

In 1984, Michael Mann sold Miami Vice to NBC with a two-word pitch: “MTV cops.”