The Kid Who Wouldn’t Stop Bouncing (The True Story of George Nissen)

When George Nissen was sixteen years old, he saw something at the circus he couldn’t stop thinking about. High above the crowd, trapeze artists would fall into a safety net and bounce back into the air. It made George think...what if you could keep bouncing?

So he started experimenting. In his parents’ garage, George used steel, canvas, springs, and whatever else he could find to build a strange new contraption unlike anything people had seen before. But inventing it was only the beginning. This is the true story of George Nissen, the kid who invented the trampoline.

SOURCE LIST:

1. Smithsonian Magazine, “How the Trampoline Came to Be.” Primary source for George Nissen’s childhood in Iowa; his interest in gymnastics; seeing circus aerialists rebound from their safety nets at age sixteen; his early experiments with canvas, scrap materials, and even parts of his own bed; and the development of the first successful trampoline with his gymnastics coach Larry Griswold. Smithsonian Magazine
2. Lemelson-MIT, “George Nissen: The Trampoline.” Source for Nissen’s early gymnastics career; building prototypes in his parents’ garage; developing the successful apparatus while attending the University of Iowa; touring with the Three Leonardos; learning the Spanish word trampolín in Mexico; and turning his invention into a business. Lemelson MIT
3. University of Iowa, “George Nissen and the Trampoline.” Source for Nissen’s upbringing in Iowa; his three NCAA gymnastics championships; the materials used in his early prototypes; his patent for the “Tumbling Device”; the trampoline’s use by the U.S. military and later astronaut training; and Nissen’s lifelong promotion of his invention. UI Libraries Blogs
4. USA Gymnastics, George Nissen Hall of Fame Profile. Source for Nissen’s development of the modern trampoline with Larry Griswold; his efforts to introduce trampolines to universities and grow trampolining as a competitive sport; and the sport’s eventual inclusion in the Olympic Games. USA Gymnastics
5. International Gymnastics Hall of Fame, George Nissen. Source for Nissen’s worldwide demonstrations and promotion of the trampoline, including the famous publicity photographs of him bouncing with a kangaroo, and his decades-long effort to establish trampolining as an international sport. International Gymnastics Hall of Fame
6. Olympedia, “Trampolining at the 2000 Summer Olympics.” Source for trampoline becoming an official Olympic gymnastics event at the Sydney Games in 2000 and for 86-year-old George Nissen being present to see his invention reach the Olympic stage.