thought this might be best here in history rather than poles.......
The “Majic” Pole
Once upon a time in early 1976 a pole was created… this was not just any Pole.. This was a POLE.. The type that men fling themselves high in the sky with….
This Majic POLE was a Pole Vaulting Pole…5 meters long and constructed “differently” than all other poles before it… and all other poles that have come after it.
This pole had a flex of 14.7 but after being brought to the factory for a “Tune up” it was re-measured as a 14.6
This pole was originally made for and owned by EB (Earl Bell) but its claim to “fame” came at the 1976 Olympic Trails in Eugene.
How!?
Dave Roberts was attempting a world record 18’8 ¾ and broke his own pole… so he “borrows” one of Earl’s poles.. It happen to be the “Majic Pole”, but it wasn’t quite majic yet. Dave clears the bar for a world record. Majic!
But that is not the end of the story…………
This “Majic” pole went on to be used by three world record holders.. All three jumped 18’6” (5.65) or higher on the “Majic” pole. Earl Bell 6’3” – 170 lbs, Mike Tully 6’4” – 195 lbs and Dave Roberts 6’2” – 180 lbs……. different in many ways but similar in many. But it was very interesting that these three could get a similar result form the same pole.
I was introduced to the pole, before I had actually seen the pole, by its designer. During a lengthy discussion in 1981 he explained what he had done to make the “Magic” poles “DNA” different. At that time I had never seen a vaulting pole made or had any technical discussion about how they were made, but I had had extensive experience (being an avid bass fisherman in Florida and having a Pro Rod maker as a friend) with how Bass fishing poles were made and understood some of the terminology of sail pieces, taper, hoop strength.. etc. So I just tried to take it all in.
Then in 1982/83 while working with one of the three vaulters from above list, I met the “Majic” pole. There in his garage stacked on some saw horses was every pole that he had ever used. Among them was the “Majic” pole.
What we were doing that day was trying to decide what series of poles he would need to start our first season of working together, and I wanted to know what poles had worked for him in the past and maybe determine “why” or if we needed to fill in some gaps…
While looking through the poles he pulls out a pole and said “well if we are looking for patterns we might had better check this one.. It’s the one Dave used and all three of us used it to jump high.
I thought it still looked “useable”… but he showed me a big “ding” about three feet up from the but end. Seems a big guy from Stanford, a discus thrower by the name of Plunknet.. had throw a discus pretty far one day at Arizona State and it slipped under the fence and zapped the pole that was laying near the pole vault runway …… across and half way down the field from the throwing circle! Plunknet was a big strong boy.
After selecting a few poles that he considered his “honey” poles, at one time or the other, including the “Majic” pole, I got a small round light on a long cord and began to check “patterns”. Didn’t really know what I might be looking for but with the information about how the “Magic” pole had been made from 1981 and my knowledge for my Bass rod maker we began to collect some info. We looked at sail piece lengths, mandrel size, how many warps for the sail, wall thicknesses, the dimensions of the sail, its position from the butt and the middle of the sail relative to the “best” grip he had used on each pole. We came up with some parameters that we used in his poles from that day on..
There was something else about the “Majic” pole that made it different. The real reason I call it “Majic”.
In the conversation with the poles designer in 1981 he talked to me about “spiral wrap”. Spiral wrap was an innovation he had created to make the pole stronger but still light enough to carry down the runway. Spiral wrap was a strip of fiberglass cloth wrapped diagonally around the pole. He actually designed and patented a machine to wrap the material around the raw pole. His soul reasoning for patenting the machine was to keep other pole companies from copying the process, knowing it was not cost effective to “hand” spiral wrap every pole.
Side bar… One of the reason we could have the conversations we had was not only my connection to Roberts and Bell but I was an amateur inventor with three designs that were patent pending, one of them I wanted to sell the “rights” to him and his company. I had spent two, long days sitting on the floor of the US patent office in Washington, DC reading every word of his patents, including the spiral machine, so I could fully understand how I wanted my patent attorney to write and present my Patent applications, which I actually wrote and drew the designs myself.
Back to the “Majic” pole. A statement that was made during our conversation stuck with me. He said something to the effect that he put the first spiral wrap on the pole going one direction.. Then he removed the pole from the rack, turned it around, and put the second spiral wrap going in the opposite direction?!! At the time I envisioned a “Chinese Handcuff” type of crisscross.. Which to me would make the poles “hoop strength” stronger. The reason that was important of course was that it could bend more without breaking.. Breakage is usually caused by the pole bending to the point that the walls get to close together (from circle to oval) and it folds so to speak. The spiral wrap was designed to make the pole stronger, without using more material. Poles of equal flex had better “bend tolerances” with spiral wrap than the ones without.
Interestingly when that company was in the process of being sold to another company I called before the transfer to get some new poles for my vaulter. A new manager was there for the transition. I told him I needed poles and that hopefully we could get them made along the line of this pole. He asked for the numbers from the label. I gave them to him. He came back to me in just a few minutes and read off the date and the numbers and said “is that it”? Sounded exact, but then he said “this is interesting.. The flex number of 14.7 is crossed out and 14.6 is written below it!” Bam.. That was the pole.
As an amateur inventor I knew that most inventors kept spiral notebooks of all of their new creations. They were dated with consecutive page numbers so they had “legal” verification of “when and what” was done. (I had actually already heard that pole design books had been kept for every pole that he had ever “invented”.)
And to finish this “tale” ..
after he read the flex number he said to me.... “This is interesting? There’s a note hear at the bottom of this pole design page?
add spiral wrap.. remove and turn pole.. add second spiral wrap."
dj
