How Did We Get Trampolines?

do you know how the trampoline was invented? We’ve all types of stories about the invention of things like the Post-It Note, but have you ever heard the tale of the discovery of the trampoline? Possibly not, which is a shame, as it’s an awfully good story.

In 1930, George Nissen was a young boy in Iowa. When the circus came to the city, he went with his family, like the majority of the boys in his town. He was entranced by the trapeze and aerial acts-but mostly by the net they dropped into at the end of their performance.

George did some tumbling and diving in high school, and learned to do some acrobatics in both gymnastics and diving. The difficulty was, he usually hit the floor or the water. When he graduated from high school at sixteen, he started tinkering with the idea of a rebounding’table’ that he could land in, instead of the floor or the air.

George got help from pals to help him weld an enormous frame and stretch heavy tent canvas across it. This’bouncing rig’ was the original trampoline. Over the next years, as he pursued his college education, George also played around with his idea. One summer he took one of his rebounding tables to the summer camp where he worked. As you can imagine, the rig was a big hit. George Nissen was surprised that kids would rather play on his rig than go swimming in the middle of the summer. It’s not surprising to us now, but no one had ever seen a trampoline before, and did not know what should be expected.

Nissen and three friends formed a tumbling act called the Three Leonardos, and traveled the country demonstrating and selling trampolines. By the time the US entered world war ii, Nissen had bought out his partners and started selling trampolines himself. He sold about 100 to the army for coaching purposes.

But the big break came when Nissen had a photo of himself taken with a kangaroo, in mid-jump, on the same trampoline. Trampolines became famous and the rest is history.

George Nissen put an extreme amount of work into building and perfecting the trampoline, and then into promoting and marketing it. But it was his genius idea of posing on a trampoline with a kangaroo that made the difference. Most people who’ve seen the photograph do not know that Nissen was holding the kangaroo’s arms as they jumped, to avoid being hit or kicked by a scared kangaroo on a trampoline.
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