What is a trampoline?
A: A trampoline is a device consisting of a piece of taut, strong fabric
stretched between a steel frame using many coiled springs.
People bounce on trampolines for recreational and competitive purposes.
The fabric that users bounce on is not elastic itself;
the elasticity is provided by what?
A: The springs that connect it to the frame, which store potential energy.
A game like trampolining was developed by the Inuit,
who would toss blanket dancers into the air on a what?
A: A walrus skin one at a time during a spring celebration of whale harvest.
There is also some evidence of people in Europe having
been tossed into the air by what?
A: By a number of people holding a blanket.
When were the trampoline-like life nets once used by
firefighters to catch people jumping out of burning buildings invented?
A: In 1887.
These may not be the true antecedents of the modern
sport of trampolining but indicate what?
A: That the concept of bouncing off a fabric surface has been around for
some time.
In the early years of the 20th century, some acrobats
used what on the stage to amuse audiences?
A: A "bouncing bed".
What was the bouncing bed?
A: It was a form of small trampoline covered by bedclothes, on which
acrobats performed mostly comedy routines.
Who built the first modern trampoline?
A: George Nissen and Larry Griswold in
1936.
Nissen was a gymnastics and diving competitor, and
Griswold was what?
A: A tumbler on the gymnastics team, both at the University of
Iowa, United
States.
They had observed trapeze artists using a tight net to
add entertainment value to their performance and experimented by doing what?
A: By stretching a piece of canvas, in which they had inserted grommets
along each side, to an angle iron frame by means of coiled springs.
It was initially used to do what?
A: To train tumblers but soon became popular in its own right.
Nissen explained that the name came from what?
A: The Spanish trampolín, meaning a diving board.
Nissen had heard the word on a what?
A: A demonstration tour in Mexico in the late 1930s and decided to use an
anglicized form as the trademark for the apparatus.
In 1942, Griswold and Nissen created what?
A: The Griswold-Nissen Trampoline & Tumbling Company, and began making
trampolines commercially in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
During World War II, the United States Navy Flight
School developed the use of the trampoline in its what?
A: In its training of pilots and navigators, giving them concentrated
practice in spatial orientation that had not been possible before.
After the war, the development of the space flight
program again brought the trampoline into use to help train who?
A: Both American and Soviet astronauts, giving them experience of variable
body positions in flight.
