When was the springboard invented

He knew the wing would work as a diving board, but it almost worked too well because the divers were launched like never before. Rude soon patented his Duraflex diving board. His Sparks, Nev. They're been used in every Olympics since Rude is still president of the company, but has turned over day-to-day operations to his daughter, Janice. His latest project is developing a noise-hushing baffle system for Stanley's new aquatic center and other indoor swimming pools. He uses an old diving board as a workbench.

Though clearly heartbroken by the death of his wife, Rude keeps busy in his new shop and hangar at the Stanley airport. After the tariff was simplified and began to assume the form we know today. The Olympic Games events were confined to compulsory and voluntary dives. For over 30 years the Amateur Diving Association held its own championships and looked after the interests of divers. In it was wound up as a separate organisation and merged with the ASA.

Since the ASA has been responsible for championships and other matters concerning diving and in order to deal competently with items affecting diving the ASA has a Diving Committee comprising people who are established authorities on the subject.

Cookies on British Swimming We use cookies on our website. I accept these cookies. Follow britishswimming. For the Games in London, a diving table was composed listing the types of dive allowed, giving descriptions of them and setting a difficulty value for each and fixing the number of required and voluntary dives. The table contained 14 dives for highboard and 20 for springboard. Recommendations for judging were also given. Constant changes came about until the FINA meeting in in Budapest where the German proposals for springboard and the Swedish proposals for highboard diving were adopted as internationally binding rules.

German diving placed particular emphasis on the good body position during flight whereas the Swedish set a high value on the courageous aspect of the dive and the splashless arrival in the water. In , the Amateur Diving Association of England, the first ever diving association, was formed and continued until when it came under the aegis of the ASA of Great Britain. From , US divers asserted their supremacy for several decades.

Two great coaches can be credited for most of these victories - Ernst Brandsten, and outstanding Swedish diver at the Olympic Games and Fred Cady. Their ideas, teaching methods and contribution to improving equipment enabled them to produce a constant stream of diving champions.

Brandsten and Cady introduced a more flexible board with a moveable fulcrum allowing the divers to leap higher and perform more difficult moves. These boards were used until the late s. In they published a new table which divided all dives into five groups for springboard and six groups for platform diving. The same system is still used today.

They also establish the four body positions. Until the s, most dives were performed in the straight position. In , the pike and tuck positions were permitted to facilitate completing somersaults and dives from lower boards.

The free position was added later to allow new, more complicated dives. Technical improvements in equipment, new dives with higher degrees of difficulty, scientifically founded methods of coaching and new attractive international events helped diving develop to the current high standard. The laminated Brandsten board was quickly replaced by the aluminium board used at the Olympic Games in Rome.

The boards at this point were made using aluminum I-beams that were bolted together. A modern metal-alloy board invented by Ray Rude marked the standardization of springboards which had an incredible influence on the progress of international diving.

Ray Rude was a high school dropout from North Dakota who taught himself how to be an inventor and engineer. When he was in 1 st grade, Ray Rude had rebuilt a miniature steam engine and in the 7 th grade had built a Ford Model T out of spare parts.

When Ray Rude moved from North Dakota to the west coast at age 15, he started his life as a self-made engineer and entrepreneur. He started Arcadia Air Products in Southern California—his own aircraft tooling manufacturing company. The company was later renamed Duraflex International. Duraflex manufactured the first aluminum diving board in out of an aircraft wing panel for a friend who needed a diving board for his pool party.

After refining the basic design, he Ray Rude developed the machinery to produce each diving board from a single aluminum extrusion. Rude designed or built much of the machinery at the Duraflex factory that is still used today to make diving boards.

Existing diving stands were not able to accommodate Duraflex diving boards so Rude designed a better one in that reduced the number of pieces that made up the stand and were better equipped to handle the stress from both the diver and the diving board. It increased the safety and longevity of the diving boards.