Origins of exercise equipment
Cabinet Magazine posted a great feature on the secret history of Cybex-like exercise machines. Apparently, the first "gym" filled with mechanical fitness contraptions was built by Swedish physician Gustav Zander in the late 19th century. The article was written by Carolyn de la Pena, author of The Body Electric: How Strange Machines Built the Modern American. From Cabinet:
Link(Zander's) mechanical horse was an early version of the Stairmaster, a contraption for cardiovascular fitness designed to imitate a "natural" activity. His stomach-punching apparatus evokes contemporary "ab-crunching" machines. What makes Zander so important, for anyone trying to trace the Cybex family tree, is what happened when his machines, created in a European cultural context, immigrated to the US in the early twentieth century. They are prototypes of the workout equipment now ubiquitous in American life...
His machines offered, Zander explained to an American audience, "a preventative against the evils engendered by a sedentary life and the seclusion of the office." In fact, Zander claimed, there was no treatment quite so appropriate for these emerging white-collar men (and their wives) as his mechanized system. While doctors' pills and potions might be easier to procure and quicker to ingest, the "increased well-being and capacity for work" gained by those who used his machines, he argued, was "rich compensation for the time bestowed on them."
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love those ornate flywheels. steampunk gym, anyone ?
Check out President Coolidge's electric horse:
http://www.forbeslibrary.org/news/CoolidgeHorse.shtml
Looks like it could masturbate and sodomize you at the same time. Steampunk sex toy?
Well, Arthur Jones (inventor of nautilus) predates cybex by over a decade. He mentions Zander in some of his writing in the late 60s-70s.
Love the workout attire... stylish, retro, versatile - straight from gym to board meeting and back.
What happened to those belt wobbling machines you see in gyms in 50s/60s movies? I guess being wobbled around the waist wasn't an effective way exercise.
With who, pray tell, can we place the blame for the invention of the Hawaii Chair?
Gidget?
at the Boerhaave Museum in Leiden, The Netherlands, you can see some of the original Zander devices; my favorite is one that simulated horseback riding.
http://www.museumboerhaave.nl/e_intro.html
This is an example of parallel invention taking place at the same time across the world. While this guy invented exercise machines in Europe, someone named Kellogg was searching for exercise machines in Michigan. Nothing he came up with caught on, but stumbled upon some ways to process grain and corn into cereal. One of his patients, a man named Post, made a lot of money by stealing his ideas, but Kellogg finally caught on and started a company to sell his own stuff.
This is an example of parallel invention taking place at the same time across the world. While this guy invented exercise machines in Europe, someone named Kellogg was searching for exercise machines in Michigan. Nothing he came up with caught on, but stumbled upon some ways to process grain and corn into cereal. One of his patients, a man named Post, made a lot of money by stealing his ideas, but Kellogg finally caught on and started a company to sell his own stuff.