It’s not everyday an inventor receives a small feature on television, but we can add the inventor of modern skiing to the list, reports DCist.
In 1954, Head was awarded a patent for his design that pressed a plywood core inside two aluminum sheets which were then covered by a shell of laminated plastic. The new skis were lighter, more durable and made it easier for skiers to turn while descending the slopes. By the mid-1960s, in time for Pete Campbell’s run-in with the equipment, the Head Standard was used by over 50 percent of skiers in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
And skiing wasn’t the only sport that “some schmo from Luthersville, Md.”—as Roger Sterling called Head—reinvented. After selling his ski company in 1969, Head went on to do for tennis rackets what he did with skis—replace wood with aluminum and later synthetic materials.
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