Trivially Speaking: Strapping adventurers popularized bungee cords

Professional movers have their means: large trucks, dollies, padding, clear packaging, rolls of packing tape, etc. Amateur movers — such as my friends — have their ways.

Ways and means don’t always come together, an example being congressional committees.

Thus, when my friends helped me move items from Stately Willard Manor to Stately Willard Manor 2.0 we had items of various sizes, shapes and weights (something like a football roster but perhaps smarter).

To ascertain that we kept all the bales on the wagon (so to speak) we had to secure them. That allows me to segue to the subject of today’s column, bungee cords.

Pickup owners have them in many sizes and lengths so on the mile and a half move to our new location we didn’t lose a single item (as far as I know).

The development of bungee cords stretches for centuries; let me see if I can tie it all together.

Going back a few millennia or so, we note that nomads had to secure their possessions on sledges or travois to keep them from sliding off the carrier on their journeys.

Sadly, they just had strips of animal gut for fasteners and wished for something similar to bungee cords.

Alas, the first hint of a bungee-like application didn’t occur until about 500 A.D. That was the period during which young men of Pentecost Island in Vanuatu began a tradition of testing their manhood by tying springy vines to their ankles and jumping from tall platforms.

They intentionally hit the ground — fortunate that didn’t carry into our century, yielding even more dense young men — supposedly cushioned by the vines to prevent brain damage (at least that’s what some of them remembered). This is the first known incident of (intentional) daring using stretchy materials, which could result in injury.

Nothing of note (relative to bungee possibilities) occurred until a Brit using Frenchman Charles Moore de la Cardamine’s invention of rubber developed the rubber band in 1845.

Around that time the word “bungee” appeared in the West Country dialect of the English language; it meant “Anything thick and squat.”

Uses of the product bounced around until it snapped back into usage by English pilots in 1936 to launch their gliders off hillsides using giant elastic cords.

For some unexplained reason the pilots used the name “bungee” for their cords.

The Second World War saw expanded use of bungee cords for fastening and holding equipment to assorted vehicles. So, returning soldiers brought the concept home with them.

This translated to expanded use among campers, movers and construction workers — none of whom jumped off high structures on the end of their industrial bungees.

That was left to Simon Keeling and David Kirke. They were members of the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club. In 1979, after discussing the Pentecost Island vine jumping (“the evil men do lives after them …”) they decided to jump from the 250-foot high Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, England.

They survived and were arrested shortly after, but were not discouraged and subsequently jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and the Royal Gorge Bridge.

The first to exploit the commercial opportunities afforded by bungee jumping was New Zealander A.J. Hackett. He made his first jump from Auckland’s Greenhithe Bridge in 1986. He followed that by jumping from other bridges and structures including the Eiffel Tower (not approved by the French).

He was attempting to build public interest in the sport(?).

He was successful enough to open the planet’s first permanent commercial bungee site, the Kawarau Bridge Bungy (the Kiwis spelled it differently) at the Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge near Queenstown on the South Island of New Zealand.

Hackett remains one of the largest commercial operators, bouncing into several countries.

My son-in-law — normal-appearing from most other observations — jumped from the Kawarau site on our excursion to New Zealand and fortunately for us, came out of it exhilarated.

The key in successful bungee jumping is to have a cord (stretched) shorter than the distance to the impact – even water at an impact from several hundred feet is not fun.

Aside from the possible injuries from bungee jumping, the most common bungee injury is having the cord snap back, causing eye injury.

Our move generated no injuries nor items falling from a moving pickup truck.

None of us were tempted to jump from bridges along the way; the CEO still needs a non-management employee to write from time-to-time.