Having a ball with 1 of Nissen’s many inventions

By Robert Lutz

News of George Nissen's death on April 7 flooded my mind with thoughts from my teen years, when I knew him. Nissen, inventor of the modern trampoline and longtime resident of Cedar Rapids, was a remarkable man. My association with him was a privilege and an influence affecting my later life.

During the early 1960s, my family lived next door to Larry Conover, George's research and development director. I came to know George through Larry, a world-class model airplane champion. I was a 15-year-old hobbyist trying to learn Larry's secrets about design and winning competitions. During the winter of 1961-62, we flew model airplanes on Sunday mornings inside Nissen's company gymnasium.

One Sunday morning in January, 1962, George burst into the gym completely unexpected. He had cut short his Hawaiian vacation to return home to work on a new idea, he explained. Asking Larry and me to push two “Goliath” trampolines together end to end, he stood watching his idea take form. We rolled a tumbling mat into a tube and suspended it from a rope pulley between the two big tramps. George threw a volleyball to Larry, instructing us to jump on the two opposing trampolines while trying to throw the ball through the rolled-up mat. He encouraged each of us to catch the ball before it fell, then to throw it back through the hole. Spaceball was invented that morning.

During the spring of 1962, George, Larry and the other creative folks at Nissen designed and built prototypes of the first Spaceball game units. They consisted of a single large trampoline as a base, with two back frames pitched at about 60-degree angles at opposite ends of the base. A gantry stood in the middle, with a basketball hoop-like tube connecting the two sides. Opponents eyed each other through the gantry netting, doing back drops into the steep backframes to change tempo, as they attempted to deliver the ball so their opponent couldn't catch it before it fell, thereby scoring a point.

But how to market this new game? Larry proposed a novel plan: If George loaned him four prototype units, Larry would take a week off (without pay) and set up a Spaceball concession at the All Iowa Fair that summer. Larry would receive all the venture's proceeds and accept all financial risk; George would get wide public exposure to Spaceball at no cost.

George agreed, and I spent eight days at the fair as a Spaceball demonstrator, ticket-taker and scorekeeper.

At 25 cents a game, we attracted more than 4,000 players - and a lot of future Spaceball customers for George!

Larry and I played lots of Spaceball that week. For a brief moment, we were the best Spaceball players on Earth. That changed quickly, though, as we were soon eclipsed by Nissen employees who played during breaks, lunch hours and after work on Spaceball units. But the memory will last me forever.

Spaceball took off, and I understand that astronauts later used it for training. You can still buy Spaceball units today from several online sources. Somehow, it's fitting that almost 50 years later, George Nissen's idea still has people jumping for joy.

Robert A. Lutz of Fort Wayne, Ind., is a retired professional engineer who spends considerable time in Cedar Rapids looking after his elderly parents. Comments: RALutzPE@AOL.com