Article about trampoline inventor George Nissen; Fun video

Update: Great archival video here called "UP IN THE AIR" which was "Presented by the Nissen Trampoline Company, Cedar Rapids, Iowa." George Nissen helps to demonstrate some simple and advanced trampoline moves.

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THE GAZETTE

11/07/1999

East Iowan put bounce fitness

Trampoline among inventions of C.R. gym-equipment maker

By Tom Fruehling

Gazette staff writer

At age 86, George Nissen is feeling frustrated.

Oh, sure, he can still execute a straight-as-a-pencil handstand and does so at the drop of a hint.

"Ham that I am, it's my trademark," he explains.

But a mishap a couple of years ago while in-line skating near his condominium in San Diego has left the lifelong physical fitness buff with some nagging stiffness. He can't perform his

patented press-up from a sitting position and instead elevates himself in the more mundane manner of kicking up his feet.

"But I'm still working on it," the longtime Cedar Rapids resident said recently by telephone from his California home. "I'll get there yet. I'm still enthusiastic."

Sound as his body is, so's his mind.

Nissen, the inventor of the trampoline and the sport's singular ambassador for the past half century, holds more than 40 patents for sports-related equipment. And he keeps on tinkering.

"There are three things that make people happy," he likes to say. "Love, work and creating."

He still loves to work on inventions.

Most recently, he's gone back to his first love: The generically named "rebound tumbling apparatus" he trademarked as the "trampoline" after the Spanish word for diving board. Around the world, the rig is mostly known as a "Nissen."

There was no such thing when he was growing up, first in his hometown of Blairstown and later in Cedar Rapids, where he graduated from Washington High School at age 16.

As a youth who weasled his way into the circus, Nissen was fascinated to see aerialists end their high-wire act by dropping into nets and bounding back up again.

With some buddies in his back yard in the early 30s, he used scrap parts to stretch canvas onto a crude frame with springs made with rubber strips from inner-tube tires. He took it with him to his summer job as a YMCA camp counselor.

"The kids had so much fun jumping on it," he recalls.

"They'd rather do that than go swimming."

His contraption was put on hold, however, while he went off to the University of Iowa and won the national tumbling championships three years in a row. In his spare time, as a senior, he went out for the school swim team and was named an All-American diver.

Then, joined by two college pals, he formed "The Three Leonardos," which toured throughout Mexico and later the United States putting on acrobatic and diving exhibitions. It was

during this time, too, that he came up with a trampoline that was both sturdy and light enough to be portable.

In the first year after his invention was perfected, Nissen sold 10 of them.

"My father said, 'Well, you've saturated the market.

When are you going to get a real job?"'

Instead, his thirst for travel kept him on the road doing tumbling tricks for some 300 high schools a year and, at the same time, showing off his newfangled invention.

"There was no market for it because nobody has ever seen one," he explains. "I had to demonstrate its worth. And that was always my forte. I like to make new things and then market

them."

World War II intervened, but Nissen used his military career in the Navy to promote and popularize the trampoline. Assigned as a flight instructor, he used the equipment to help pilots develop their timing and coordination.

Back home in Cedar Rapids, he incorporated the Nissen Trampoline company in 1946. Over the next 20 years he turned it into the world's largest gymnastics equipment manufacturer. Many of his patents came with the development of the top-of-the-line chrome-plated gym apparatus that is still used worldwide.

"They're as good as anything new," Nissen maintains.

"The best stuff ever made was made right in Cedar Rapids."

Along the way he also helped start an equipment company in Japan.

His own company was swallowed up by conglomerates in the 1970s (eventually becoming known as Universal Gym Equipment) in the wake of a downturn in trampoline sales due to liability concerns.

But while the sport fell out of favor in the United States, Nissen says it has stayed popular in more than 60 countries around the world. And, after more than 50 years of lobbying, he's set to enjoy the fruits of his labor by watching the first Olympic trampoline competition next year.

Meanwhile, his Bunsavers personal padded stadium seats are still selling. His idea of padded bleachers took off for a while, but the product hasn't been pursued by the folks who bought his company.

And, in addition to a new compact trampoline, Nissen is working on a gizmo he calls the Armchair Exercycle that allows airline passengers to exercise in their seats while they fly.

He and his wife, Annie, moved several years ago from Cedar Rapids to California, where daughter Dian runs a company called Ageless Fitness. Another daughter, Dagmar Munn, is manager of the Center for Health and Well-Being at St. Luke's Hospital.