alamo50
12-27-2007, 06:03 AM
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_blogs/basketball/ncaa/uploaded_images/ehrat2-751910.jpg
Arthur Ehrat, with one of his "Rebounder" rims, in Virden, Ill.
Last December, around Christmastime, Arthur Ehrat sent me this seven-line e-mail in all caps:
LUKE
BREAKAWAY RIM IS NOW IN SMITHSONIAN
THE LEMELSON CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF INVENTIONS AND INNOVATIONS.
I AM TURNING 82 ON DEC 20; PATENT WAS ISSUED IN 1982 ON DEC 28.
HAVE A GREAT DAY
ARTHUR EHRAT
PS US PATENT 4365802 ISSUED 12-28-1982
Ehrat and I had corresponded a few times prior, mostly about his invention's pending inclusion in the Smithsonian. I regrettably didn't make time to write about it then -- blame Bob Knight for dragging out his pursuit of the all-time wins record late last December, maybe, or my being asked to cover the Orange Bowl -- but this is a more appropriate year to discuss Ehrat's niche in basketball history anyway. Friday is the 25th anniversary of the issue date of Art's patent for the first breakaway rim.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_blogs/basketball/ncaa/uploaded_images/ehrat4-743184.jpg
Ehrat's rim patent, which was issued on Dec. 28, 1982.
Courtesy of Arthur Ehrat
Ehrat was never a basketball player. Nor was he a coach. He was barely even a fan of the sport. Much of his life was spent as the manager of the grain elevator at Farmers Elevator Company in Lowder, Ill.; he held two patents for farming products before he delved into rims. His link to the hardwood was through a nephew, Randy Albrecht, who was an assistant coach at St. Louis University. Albrecht inquired, in 1975, if Ehrat had any ideas for creating a basketball rim that wouldn't put players -- as well as backboards -- at risk from aggressive dunks.
The slam had been outlawed in NCAA games since 1967, mostly as a result of Lew Alcindor's dominance as a 7-footer at UCLA. But the aerial stylings of Dr. Julius Erving in the ABA were making the dunk en vogue again, and it was being reconsidered for the college game in the mid-'70s. When the NCAA reinstated the dunk for the '76-77 season, Ehrat already had a prototype in the works.
Ehrat was a child of the Great Depression, and spent his would-be recreation time as a youth in Shobonier, Ill., doing farm work. This was where he gained his early mechanical skills, operating and repairing his family's agricultural equipment. "I didn't even see a basketball until the age of 10," he told me last year. Encouraged by his nephew, a 55-year-old Ehrat bought a $20 test rim in '75 and began to experiment. His laboratory was a friend's shed, outfitted with a portable heater.
After rejecting one prototype that featured a door-hinge mechanism, and another that used magnets, Ehrat found the magic part: a coil from a John Deere cultivator. The spring was strong enough not to budge on normal shots, but would yield when 125 pounds of slam-dunk force was applied. Ehrat called it "The Rebounder." How many modern-day hoop-heads are aware that an octogenarian in rural Illinois with a John Deere cultivator coil has as much to do with the evolution of the dunk as Dr. J and Michael Jordan?
The breakaway rim's patent application -- in which it's officially named the "deformation-preventing swingable mount for basketball goals" -- was filed by Ehrat in 1976 and, after numerous legal challenges, finally issued in 1982. (Another inventor, Frederick Tyner, had independently begun work on a rim in the spring of '76, one year after Ehrat, but Tyner was first to file for a patent.)
Ehrat's rim made its high-profile debut at the time of the 1978 Final Four, in St. Louis. Albrecht had put two of the "Rebounder" prototypes up at Forest Park Community College for one of the earliest college slam-dunk contests, and Ehrat and his wife drove down from Virden for the occasion.
"There wasn't even 100 people there, and I was sitting next to John Wooden," Ehrat said. "I remember him saying, 'They've gotta take those rims down, they're both broken.' He didn't know they were breakaway rims."
Ehrat's invention has since made its way into the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center as well as the archives of the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. The NBA eventually opted to use a later model of breakaway rim as part of its official backboard, but Ehrat's "swingable mount" was licensed to 12 companies and emerged as a must-have feature for any respectable gym.
Among the things Ehrat e-mailed me a few weeks ago, upon request, was an image of one of his original documents that promoted The Rebounder. It's a type-written, 10-point plan from the late '70s, with phrases capitalized for emphasis, such as, "WILL TAKE THE SHOCK OFF THE GLASS." After extolling all of the mechanical benefits in the first nine points, the 10th stated an opinion: "I feel the REBOUNDER WILL BE A GREAT ASSET TO THE GAME."
Ehrat's invention has become so ingrained in the modern game that when a player like Tyler Hansbrough rips down a dunk, compressing the spring on a rim, and it thwacks! back into place, we think nothing of it. That's just what we expect a rim to do. It has, no doubt, saved many a backboard from shattering from the stress of Shaq-like slams. And it's kept its inventor engaged in the sport -- even if he cares little for most of what happens on the floor.
Ehrat also sent along a few newspaper clippings, including an article from 2005 in which he explained his continued interest in basketball. "Honest to pieces, I know practically nothing about the damn game," he said then. "I pay attention to the dunk. That's the only thing I wait for."
Link (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_blogs/basketball/ncaa/2007/12/breaking-away.html)
Arthur Ehrat, with one of his "Rebounder" rims, in Virden, Ill.
Last December, around Christmastime, Arthur Ehrat sent me this seven-line e-mail in all caps:
LUKE
BREAKAWAY RIM IS NOW IN SMITHSONIAN
THE LEMELSON CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF INVENTIONS AND INNOVATIONS.
I AM TURNING 82 ON DEC 20; PATENT WAS ISSUED IN 1982 ON DEC 28.
HAVE A GREAT DAY
ARTHUR EHRAT
PS US PATENT 4365802 ISSUED 12-28-1982
Ehrat and I had corresponded a few times prior, mostly about his invention's pending inclusion in the Smithsonian. I regrettably didn't make time to write about it then -- blame Bob Knight for dragging out his pursuit of the all-time wins record late last December, maybe, or my being asked to cover the Orange Bowl -- but this is a more appropriate year to discuss Ehrat's niche in basketball history anyway. Friday is the 25th anniversary of the issue date of Art's patent for the first breakaway rim.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_blogs/basketball/ncaa/uploaded_images/ehrat4-743184.jpg
Ehrat's rim patent, which was issued on Dec. 28, 1982.
Courtesy of Arthur Ehrat
Ehrat was never a basketball player. Nor was he a coach. He was barely even a fan of the sport. Much of his life was spent as the manager of the grain elevator at Farmers Elevator Company in Lowder, Ill.; he held two patents for farming products before he delved into rims. His link to the hardwood was through a nephew, Randy Albrecht, who was an assistant coach at St. Louis University. Albrecht inquired, in 1975, if Ehrat had any ideas for creating a basketball rim that wouldn't put players -- as well as backboards -- at risk from aggressive dunks.
The slam had been outlawed in NCAA games since 1967, mostly as a result of Lew Alcindor's dominance as a 7-footer at UCLA. But the aerial stylings of Dr. Julius Erving in the ABA were making the dunk en vogue again, and it was being reconsidered for the college game in the mid-'70s. When the NCAA reinstated the dunk for the '76-77 season, Ehrat already had a prototype in the works.
Ehrat was a child of the Great Depression, and spent his would-be recreation time as a youth in Shobonier, Ill., doing farm work. This was where he gained his early mechanical skills, operating and repairing his family's agricultural equipment. "I didn't even see a basketball until the age of 10," he told me last year. Encouraged by his nephew, a 55-year-old Ehrat bought a $20 test rim in '75 and began to experiment. His laboratory was a friend's shed, outfitted with a portable heater.
After rejecting one prototype that featured a door-hinge mechanism, and another that used magnets, Ehrat found the magic part: a coil from a John Deere cultivator. The spring was strong enough not to budge on normal shots, but would yield when 125 pounds of slam-dunk force was applied. Ehrat called it "The Rebounder." How many modern-day hoop-heads are aware that an octogenarian in rural Illinois with a John Deere cultivator coil has as much to do with the evolution of the dunk as Dr. J and Michael Jordan?
The breakaway rim's patent application -- in which it's officially named the "deformation-preventing swingable mount for basketball goals" -- was filed by Ehrat in 1976 and, after numerous legal challenges, finally issued in 1982. (Another inventor, Frederick Tyner, had independently begun work on a rim in the spring of '76, one year after Ehrat, but Tyner was first to file for a patent.)
Ehrat's rim made its high-profile debut at the time of the 1978 Final Four, in St. Louis. Albrecht had put two of the "Rebounder" prototypes up at Forest Park Community College for one of the earliest college slam-dunk contests, and Ehrat and his wife drove down from Virden for the occasion.
"There wasn't even 100 people there, and I was sitting next to John Wooden," Ehrat said. "I remember him saying, 'They've gotta take those rims down, they're both broken.' He didn't know they were breakaway rims."
Ehrat's invention has since made its way into the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center as well as the archives of the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. The NBA eventually opted to use a later model of breakaway rim as part of its official backboard, but Ehrat's "swingable mount" was licensed to 12 companies and emerged as a must-have feature for any respectable gym.
Among the things Ehrat e-mailed me a few weeks ago, upon request, was an image of one of his original documents that promoted The Rebounder. It's a type-written, 10-point plan from the late '70s, with phrases capitalized for emphasis, such as, "WILL TAKE THE SHOCK OFF THE GLASS." After extolling all of the mechanical benefits in the first nine points, the 10th stated an opinion: "I feel the REBOUNDER WILL BE A GREAT ASSET TO THE GAME."
Ehrat's invention has become so ingrained in the modern game that when a player like Tyler Hansbrough rips down a dunk, compressing the spring on a rim, and it thwacks! back into place, we think nothing of it. That's just what we expect a rim to do. It has, no doubt, saved many a backboard from shattering from the stress of Shaq-like slams. And it's kept its inventor engaged in the sport -- even if he cares little for most of what happens on the floor.
Ehrat also sent along a few newspaper clippings, including an article from 2005 in which he explained his continued interest in basketball. "Honest to pieces, I know practically nothing about the damn game," he said then. "I pay attention to the dunk. That's the only thing I wait for."
Link (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_blogs/basketball/ncaa/2007/12/breaking-away.html)