When was the first pogo stick invented

In an effort to promote pogo sticks, George Hansburg taught the Ziegfeld Follies girls how to pogo. In , Ziegfeld featured a marriage performed on pogo sticks. The roaring twenties proved to be the height of popularity for pogo sticks and all kinds of pogo stick stunts and publicity tricks occurred.

In , George Hansburg invented the Master Pogo, an improved steel pogo stick with a longer-lasting spring. CMU robotics researchers develop a pogo stick that aims high. He put in earplugs, took cover behind a concrete water fountain and cranked up the pressure in the tube with a nitrogen tank until the tube exploded. He found that the cylinder could withstand pressures of nearly pounds per square inch, more than three times what an adult rider was apt to produce.

They were a hit with tourists, visiting athletes and TV cameras. For two years, his pogo sticks gathered dust on a rack in the garage. The publicity surrounding the Flybar was helping establish a market for extreme pogo sticks. In December , a month before the launch, they suffered an almost catastrophic setback.

He had bounced to heights of about five feet when the pressurized tube snapped. Its top half rocketed into his chin, pushing his four front teeth into his nose, shattering his jaw and almost completely severing his bottom lip.

Brian underwent plastic surgery to reattach his lip, repair his nose and implant five false teeth. He still lacks feeling in his lower lip. But Brian was undeterred. An analysis found the tube defective; Brian won a settlement from its maker. Unwilling to risk another failure, Bruce Spencer turned to heavier but tougher materials, first a space-age thermoplastic and, finally, aerospace aluminum.

Riders could pressurize the tube with an ordinary bike pump. The Spencers sold their first Vurtego in January The Spencers told me they sell around a year, all through their website. I met with Bruce and Brian Spencer in a narrow, sky-lit work space in a nondescript commerce park in Mission Viejo, where they personally assemble their pogo sticks. Saddleback Mountain rose in the haze beyond the parking lot.

It was a Wednesday afternoon, a week and a half before Christmas, and father and son were scurrying to stay atop a rush of holiday business, including a first-ever order from Egypt, the 42nd country in which Vurtego has found customers. I eventually found him on Facebook, which his daughter had nudged him to join. His life had seen some ups and downs since his Flybar pogo stick came to market. When we spoke by phone, he told me that he had split with SBI Enterprises.

He was now living in a single-room-occupancy hotel on skid row in Vancouver, British Columbia. Middleton, 55, told me that the Flybar was his answer to a question that came to him when he was During bike rides to her house, after reaching high speeds, he hated having to brake at lights and squander all that kinetic energy. Might there be some way to store the energy lost to braking? Could you convert it to potential energy and then release it to propel you back to your original speed? For decades, the question remained one of the many intellectual riddles caroming around his brain.

Middleton entered MIT at age 16, with dreams of becoming a theoretical physicist. Back in Canada, he worked a series of menial jobs—parks laborer, millworker—and eventually became a stay-at-home dad. Her articles have appeared in the "Palm Beach Times" and she is the author of numerous books published by Hamlyn U. Regardless of how old we are, we never stop learning.

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Flybar today is not just pogos. New products for toddlers, stilts, gear, and skateboards are all designed and developed with the passion and innovation George Hansburg first demonstrated nearly years ago. Shopping Cart. Our Story FAQ. Product Manuals Disclaimer. Home Our Story.