In American pop-culture, the idiom “jumping the shark” refers to the moment a TV show, or more generally any trend or practice, resorts to increasingly ridiculous gimmicks to get attention. The phrase was named for a scene in an episode of Happy Days, when too-cool-for-school Fonzie jumps over a shark pen on water skis.
The “Fonze” was not the first pop-cultural icon to “jump the shark.” In October of 1921, in the midst of a worldwide pogo-sticking craze, Pogo sticks poetically “Jumped the shark”:
A pearl-diving native of Togo,
Obtained, from a trader, a pogo.
He tried, for a lark,
To jump over a shark.
But the shark pogo’d too, so ‘twas no go.
The Sketch, Volume 116, October 5, 1921, page 34.
A few months later, the Pogo craze may have figuratively “jumped the shark,” when Florenz Ziegfeld pulled off an early precursor of The Man Show’s trademark girls jumping on trampolines– girls jumping on Pogo sticks:
A group of the “Midnight Frolic” girls went shopping on Fifth Avenue yesterday using their pogo jumping sticks. For about half an hour Fifth Avenue had a hard time.
The Evening World, December 6, 1921, final extra, page 28.
Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), December 3, 1921, Night Extra, page 24.
At the time, the Pogo stick was less than one year old. The Pogo stick was arguably invented in England in early 1921; if not in Germany in early 1920. The German “hopping stilt,” which may or may not have been a full-fledged Pogo stick, was intended as an improvement on an earlier design, with roots in 1880s Wichita, Kansas.
In 1955, George Hansburg of Upstate New York, reinvigorated the Pogo stick; merging the traditional, wooden toy with new technology, new materials and a handlebar. Hansburg’s modernistic, metallic Pogo stick was so successful that it edged out the hula hoop, to be named Time Magazine’s the 34th greatest toy of all time. His company, Flybar, still makes Pogo sticks, and continues to push the boundaries of extreme Pogo technology.
Invention of the Pogo Stick
There may be no single “inventor” of the Pogo stick. It may be the result of step-wise improvements by a succession of inventors, each of whom contributed an important element. The three necessary features of a “Pogo stick” are the spring-mounted base, two footrests, and a handle; each of which were first described in three separate patents, spanning forty years.
The Handle
The final piece of the puzzle was the handle. The handle first appears in the earliest known, unambiguous description of a fully-formed Pogo stick. Walter Lines filed his patent for a “jumping stick” in 1921:
Double Footrest
On May 9, 1920, Max Pohlig and Ernst Gottschalk, of Hannover, Germany, filed a patent application on an improved “spring-action hopping stilt” (“Federnd wirkende Huepfstelze”). The distinctive feature of their invention was a double footrest. Earlier “hopping stilts” came in pairs, one stilt strapped to each calf. Pohlig and Gottschalk believed that using a single stilt, with a double footrest, would be less awkward, and therefore more useful:
It is known to provide a spring-activated hopping-stilt, with a single foot-rest surface for human feet, and which is to be strapped to a wearer’s calf. Such hopping-stilts are difficult and awkward to use, and therefore are not widely used.
By this invention, and without more, a generally usable hopping stilt, as much for children as for adults, is achieved; in which the suspension comprises a spring mounted between the pole and base, whereby a foot rest for a human foot is arranged on both sides of the pole.
German Patent DE 352704A, Gottschalk and Pohlig.
Gottschalk and Pohlig’s drawing looks very much like the lower end of a Pogo stick, but they did not provide a drawing or description of the upper end of the stick. It is unclear whether they imagined a single stilt strapped to the user’s calves, like previously known hopping stilts they mention, or an actual Pogo stick with a handle. But even if they did not “invent” the Pogo stick, as such, they appear to have at least invented the concept of using a single stick, with a double-footrest.
Spring-Mounted Base
Strap-on hopping stilts, like the earlier stilts Pohlig and Gottschalk described, may have their roots in Wichita, Kansas. In 1881, George Herrington of Wichita, patented a pair of “spring stilts” for “leaping great distances and heights, and for walking or running with great rapidity and ease”:
If Pohlig and Gottschalk are to be believed, Herrington’s jumping stilts and their progeny never enjoyed wide success.
The Name
POhlig and GOttschalk may have made one more significant contribution to Pogo – its name. It is generally assumed that Pogo is an acronym formed from the first syllables of Pohlig and Gottschalk. Forming acronyms from first syllables, as opposed to first letters, is a common practice in German. The connection has not been proven, however (at least as far as I know), and there are other reasonable possibilities; “pole” and “go,” for example. It is not unheard of for there to be a too-good-to-be-true coincidence involving the naming of an iconic pop-culture image. Mad Magazine’s poster boy, Alfred E. Neuman, for example, was named after Alfred Newman, a well-known film-score composer. Alfred E. Neuman’s face, on the other hand, was based on an image that originated as a theatrical poster for the play, The New Boy. “New Boy,” “New Man” – “Neuman” – you can’t write this stuff. It’s true, but most likely just a coincidence.
Pohlig/Gottschalk = POGO may be as good a guess as any; and may very well be true. But it is curious that all of the early Pogo-craze reports came out of England and France; not Germany. But an article about Pogo sticks in France uses both terms, “hopping stilt” (consistent with Pohlig and Gottschalk’s nomenclature) and “pogo,” so perhaps there was some association between the two:
Hopping Stilts are the New French Playthings.
“I think I’ll hop down to the office and see how things are,” says the French business man to his wife. And “hop” is just exactly what he means. For France, and especially Paris, has taken to the “pogo” stick, a stick equipped with two rests for the feet.
Illustrated World, Volume 36, Number 6, February, 1922, page 900.
But whatever the inspiration for the name, the name was in use by mid-1921. When The Pogo Company of New York City filed for trademark for the word, POGO, for use in association with “jumping sticks,” they claimed use of the word since June 28, 1921.
The word seems to have been well-established by the time the early Accounts of Pogo sticks in London and Paris appeared in September 1921. If anyone has any evidence of the use of POGO in Germany (or anywhere else, for that matter), before June of 1921, let me know. It would be nice to close the gap in the historical record.
The Pogo Craze
Regardless of who invented the Pogo stick, or where the name came from, Pogo sticks were all the rage by September of 1921:
But high-society Pogoing also created new social obligations that required deep thought:
But not everyone was cut-out to ride a pogo stick, as illustrated by these two images (the first one also shows an early predecessor of the Razor scooter):
Well-suited, or not, New York’s health commissioner encouraged everyone to ride a Pogo stick for their health:
The craze started in London, where it also made its first appearance on stage, in The Peep Show at the Hippodrome:
Cambridge students got into the act too:
The fad also reached France:
The first Pogo sticks went on sale in the United States in September 1921:
September 22
September 24
Within a few, short weeks, girls were racing Pogo sticks in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolics:
In the show, each girl wore a letter-sweater representing an Ivy League, or other East Coast, school. In late November 1921, perhaps to make up for Yale’s loss to Harvard earlier in the week (it was their only loss of the season), the woman wearing the “Y” sweater won the Pogo race:
The Yale Pogoiste may have won the race; but she soon lost the battle.
The Pogoiste and the Playboy
In 1922, the Pogo stick landed one of Florence Ziegfeld’s “Follies Girls” in hot water.
He Said:
Student and Chorus Bride in Flight as His Brothers Plan Action on Elopement.
“It was a case of love at second sight,” he said. “It began last fall when the ‘Frolic’ opened. It was in the pogo stick race. Geneva wore a ‘Y’ sweater, and that night she won. I went again the next night, and she slipped or something. Anyway, she lost and I felt terribly sorry for her – you understand. That started me. I was with some friends who knew her, and so I met her. You can tell the world that I’m crazy about her.
The evening world. (New York, N.Y.) 1887-1931, March 10, 1922, Final Edition, Page 2, Image 2.
She Said:
Pogo Girl Fights for Annullment
“When I was pogoing on the stage one night, my stick broke and I fell behind the other girls. Robert stood up in the orchestra and cheered me on. The next day I received a letter from him asking me to meet him in a hotel lobby, and I did so.
“We went to a restaurant. He proposed. I did not say yes or no, for I was undecided. I saw him off and on for a week. Then one day he came to see me on Saturday and on Sunday we were married. I had never done that before, so I just up and did it.
The Washington Times, November 12, 1922, page 21.
“Geneva,” like her mother before her, was one of Ziegfeld’s “Follies Girl.” She’s the one on the far right in the Pogo-girls photograph at the top of this piece; her name listed as, “Gertrude Mitchell.” Whe was only seventeen years old. Although she went on to have a successful stage and film career (she taught the Three Stooges how to dance, for example, in the 1935 short film Hoi Polloi), her most famous role may have been as the Pogoing temptress of the gossip columns.
“Robert” was an heir to the family steel business, The Savage Steel Company, of Duluth Minnesota. He was not much older than Geneva at the time. He had just dropped out during his freshman year at Yale; certain “entrance conditions” made him ineligible to participate in athletics. Like his older brothers before him, he intended to become a football star at Yale, then a national powerhouse. While taking classes at The Milford School, pending his readmission into Yale, he had plenty of time on his hands to romance “Follies Girls” and write poetry. His first collection of poems was set to publish a few weeks after his elopement; perhaps his notoriety pushed up the publication date, or got him the book deal in the first place.
For her part, although she appears to have been young and impetuous, Geneva seems to have had her priorities straight. For his part, Robert Savage seems to have been a pretty decent fella:
“She made me promise,” Savage confessed, “that I wouldn’t let the family interfere with her career. She’s to keep right on. I don’t like it, but she wants to. I want to go back to school and go to college. The family’s having a conclave now. I’ll do whatever they decide.
The Evening World (New York), March 10, 1922, Final Edition, Page 2.
In the end, everyone got what they wanted; the family got rid of the young interloper, and Robert Savage went back to school, became a football star, and romanced even more famous actresses like Clara Bow. Robert’s Savage irresistibility even lost Bow her engagement to her first love, Gilbert Roland:
“Gilbert was the first man I ever cared about,” she declared later . . . . In March of 1926 Clara announced her engagement to Roland, whom she had met when they worked together in a film called, “Plastic Age.” Like most of Clara’s engagements, this one made headlines.
One of the reasons was a former Yale football star, Robert Savage, who also went limp every time he looked at the lovely star.
Although Clara was supposed to be Roland’s betrothed, she appeared one day with Savage at the Los Angeles marriage license bureau, announcing she and the athlete planned to wed.
The Milwaukee Journal, February 11, 1953.
She claims that it was all just a joke – and they never did, actually get a license – but it was all too much for Roland. Although Bow’s career took off; her love life was all downhill from there.
More Pogo Craze
But the Pogo did bring only heartache – it brought joy to millions.
Children Pogoed:
Little Bo’ Peep Pogoed:
Champion Pogoists strut their stuff:
Even tennis players pogoed:
Eventually, everyone must have been Pogoed-out.
But the mystery remained, “where did it come from?”
Exotic Origin Stories
Not content with looking through patent records, or simply asking the manufacturers where Pogo sticks came from, several “journalists” concocted more colorful origin stories for the Pogo:
The “pogo,” a modern form of the old jumping stick is the latest toy that has found favor with Parisian children and has already made its appearance in New York City.
The “pogo” was first found in use, in a primitive form, among the Dyaks of Central Borneo and it takes its name from their word for it. It was a stick with a cross-piece on which favored young men of the tribe used to perform a ceremonial dance at sacrificial ceremonies. The chiefs of the tribe took charge of the “pogos” between sacrifices and they were considered sacred.
A French traveler on his return from Borneo told a manufacturer of toys about the “pogo.” This manufacturer thought it would go well as a toy for children, if properly modified. He made it up with an india rubber pad and a strong spring underneath the cross-piece.
The Watchman and Southron (Sumter, South Carolina), December 10, 1921, page 5.
Another “report” placed the origins in seventeenth-century Transylvania:
I am told that the stick itself has been in use in Transylvania since the seventeenth century. A wandering artisan noted the difficulty that the natives of the village of Pogo had in crossing a nearby stream. He set his brain to work on the problem and soon contrived the stick that bears the name of the town and that enabled the villagers to hop across the water with ease. It seems that during the war some Austrian officers were quartered in the Pogo valley. They took some of the sticks with them to Vienna, improved on the idea and soon the vogue was on all through Europe.
Printers’ Ink Monthly, volume 4, number 4, March 1922, page 34.
Even George B. Hansburg, who received his patent on the modern Pogo stick in 1957, told a “charming little story on the origin of the pogo stick” during his appearance on the television game-show, What’s My Line, in 1959:
The Pogo origin emanates from a Burmese father who had a very beautiful daughter, and they were very poor, and they had no shoes, and she had to go to temple to pray. And having no facility to go to temple without shoes and the muddy roads that they had, her father conceived a very crude idea of transporting her to temple, and so was created a jumping device by tying a cross-piece on a stick, and thus permitting the child to jump to the temple to pray. And her named happened to be Pogo.
Conclusion
Whether English, American, German, or a little of each, the Pogo stick swept the world in 1921 and 1922; only to disappear again for a few decades. George Hansburg revived the Pogo stick in the late 1950s, but after a brief resurgence, it faded away again into relative obscurity.
In recent years, in the wake of a wave of new “extreme sports,” Hansburg’s old company, Flybar, and upstarts like Vurtego, are now pushing the limits of extreme pogo technology; big air, big tricks, and big sticks – all requiring big . . . .
. . . courage.