Pogo stick

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Image:Pogo Stick.jpg A pogo stick is a device, usually considered a children's toy, used for hopping up and down. It was invented by Joseph Winston Herbert Hopkins in the 1820s. It consists of a pole with a T-bar handle at one end, and spring-loaded footpads on the other.

The pole juts down some distance below the footpads and has a rubber cover at the bottom end for traction. The operator places his feet on the footpads while balancing on the pole, then jumps or presses down on the footpads to compress the spring. When the spring has been fully compressed, the operator lifts his weight aided by the recoil of the spring and the pogo-stick; and hops several inches or even feet into the air. This process is repeated to create a hopping action. The pogo stick can be steered, with some difficulty, by shifting one's weight; and becomes an interesting form of locomotion.

Later, improvements on this concept have been made, including the Vurtego, Flybar, and BowGo, which allow operators to jump much higher than with a regular pogo stick.

Trivia

• American metal band System of a Down have written a song about the pogo stick, entitled Bounce for their Toxicity album.
• On the 100 greatest toys countdown on VH1 called "I Love Toys," the pogo stick grabbed the #38 spot.
• The most famous pogo-stick athlete is William Heard. He won gold at the Macabee pogo-stick championships, which is widely regarded as the greatest pogo-stick championship of all time. He at one stage won 5 consecutive medals at the pogo-stick trials in Bergen, Norway. Several feature lengthed movies have been dedicated to one William Heard, the most famous of these is "In A Word; Will Heard".
• video games featuring pogo sticks include: Pogo Stick Olympics, Pogo Joe, and the Commander Keen series

See also

• Vurtego
• Flybar
• BowGo [1]
• Stunt Pogo

Patents

• Pogo stick — US2,712,443 — H. H. Hohberger
• Pogo stick — US2,793,036 — G. B. Hansburg
• Combustible gas powered pogo stick — US2,929,459 — G. Spitzmesser
• BowGo — US6,558,297 — Brown, Jr.; H. Benjamin (Pittsburgh, PA); Nourbakhsh; Illah R. (Pgh, PA); Zeglin; Garth John (Pittsburgh, PA)de:Springstock

he:מקל פוגו ja:ホッピング no:Hoppestokk