Trampoline and Tumbling

A trampoline is a gymnastic and recreational device consisting of a piece of taut, strong fabric stretched over a steel frame using many coiled springs to provide a rebounding force which propels the jumper high into the air.

A youth at the peak of his jump on a home trampoline.

History

Walrus skins

It has been said that one of the first sort of trampolining was done by the Eskimos who used to toss each other into the air on a walrus skin, something like the sheet used by firemen to catch people jumping out of burning buildings.

There also is some evidence of people in England having been tossed into the air by a number of people holding a blanket. These may or may not be the true origins of the sport of trampolining, but it is certain that in the early years of the 20th century some stage acts used a "bouncing bed" on the stage to amuse audiences. The bouncing bed was in reality a form of small trampoline covered by bedclothes on which the acrobats performed mostly comedy routines.

Trapeze artistes

The trampoline itself, according to circus lore, was supposedly first developed by an artiste called Du Trampolin who saw the possibility of using the trapeze safety net as a form of propulsion and landing device and experimented with different systems of suspension, eventually reducing the net to a practical size for separate performance. While there were trampoline like devices used for shows and in the circus, the story of Du Trampolin is probably a myth and no documentary evidence has been found to support this.

The first modern trampoline was built by George Nissen and Larry Griswold around 1934. Nissen was a gymnastics and diving competitor and Griswold was a tumbler on the gymnastics team, both at the University of Iowa, USA. They had observed trapeze artists using a tight net to add entertainment value to their performance and experimented 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 train tumblers but soon became popular in its own right. The name comes from the Spanish trampolín meaning a diving board. George Nissen heard the word on 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 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 training of pilots and navigators, giving them concentrated practice in orientation such as had never been possible before. After the war, the development of the space flight programme again brought the trampoline into use to help train both American and Soviet Astronauts, giving them experience of variable body positions in flight.

A competitive gymnastic sport of trampolining has been developed and it has been part of the Olympic Games since 2000. On a competitive trampoline a user can bounce to a height of up to ten metres. Trampolines feature in the competitive sport of trampolining as well as in both Slamball, a variant of basketball, and Bossaball, a variant of volleyball.

Modern gymnastics, as regulated by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique incorporates six distinct disciplines:

• Artistic gymnastics (further classified as Men's Artistic Gymnastics and Women's Artistic Gymnastics)
• Rhythmic gymnastics
• Sports aerobics
• Sports acrobatics
• Trampolining
• General gymnastics
• Power Tumbling