Interesting facts about the creation of a treadmill
The treadmill is one of the most popular pieces of exercise equipment you'll find in any gym, fitness club, or sports center. Someone loves it, someone hates it, but the fact remains that for most people it is an integral part of the training program. One of the reasons for this popularity is the availability for users of any level of training, ease of use and the fact that it is one of the most effective ways to lose weight. But how did the treadmill appear in the first place? Let's take a closer look at this popular exerciser and its history.
It may come as a surprise to some, but the origin of the treadmill is not related to entertainment or sports. Basically, she came from the world of engineering and construction. Throughout history, it has been closely associated with manual labor.
In the first century of our era, the Romans used the predecessor of the treadmill, known as the running wheel or polyspaston (from the Greek. Polyspastos – stretched by many ropes). This human-powered device was a large wheel attached to a crane.
Acting as a winch, people walked continuously inside this wheel, which looked like a huge hamster wheel. The movement of the wheel caused a crane attached to it to lift heavy objects. Due to the large diameter of the wheel, the crane’s lifting capacity was about 60 times more efficient than the traditional physical methods previously used by the ancient Egyptians to build the pyramids. It was truly an engineering feat at the time.
Although the human-powered wheel remained a key piece of technology until the 13th century, its form factor still closely resembled the traditional water wheel.
In the 18th century, horses were put on a kind of “treadmill” to run stationary machines when renewable energy sources such as wind or water were not available. In isolated cases, horse-drawn tracks were used as a motor for boats, especially on the East Coast of the United States.
This version of the track was marked with a horizontal band, which vaguely resembles the models we know today.
The horse treadmill was then adapted for everyday domestic use: scaled-down versions were created for dogs, sheep and goats, designed to operate oil presses, mills, mills and cream separators.
The next big step in the evolution of treadmills took place in 1817, and this was probably its saddest use. Seeing the obvious idleness of the prisoners, the British engineer Sir William Cubitt was inspired to create a “punitive treadmill”. This machine, despite its name, actually looked more like a modern stair climber than a treadmill. Nevertheless, Sir William saw in this new invention an effective means of re-educating the prisoners, giving them a “taste of real work.”
These “corrective treadmills” resembled a treadmill, but with a different movement technique: people walked not inside it, but on it. The prisoners clung to the suspended crossbars and climbed the stairs that turned the wheel.
Since this treadmill was self-propelled, the wheel continued to move as long as at least one prisoner continued to struggle. Despite the fact that Sir William came from a family of mechanical engineers, walking the prisoners on his treadmill did not bring any practical benefit. While the US actively used the labor of prisoners for various types of useful work, British prisons used the treadmill only for punishment.
As a rule, prisoners walked on the wheel for about six hours a day, climbing to a height of up to 4,000 meters and quickly burning more than 2,000 calories. One of the longest documented wheel climbs was at Warwick Prison, where inmates climbed a total of 5,200 vertical meters in 10 hours, the equivalent of climbing the Empire State Building 13 times.
Later, Sir William did develop a “useful” version of the treadmill that allowed water to be pumped and corn to be ground, although this was still a difficult task for the prisoners. Eventually, the prison treadmill was abolished in 1902, and with that, the treadmill as we know it today began to gradually take that shape.
In 1911, Claude Lauren Hagen filed a US patent for an “exercise machine” with a treadmill. The patent was issued in 1913, and for that time this invention was surprisingly detailed and visionary. For example, in his drawings, Hagen suggested that his invention could be folded up, allowing it to be easily transported.
In addition, he took into account the needs of users by adding adjustable side bars, and even thought out a sound insulation system by attaching four external struts to raise the canvas above the ground – this would also allow for its tilt to be adjusted. It is difficult to find evidence that Hagen turned this drawing into a working prototype, but it is still mentioned in modern patents.
During the 1920s and 1930s, manual treadmill models came to the fore. They did not have a motor and the user had to manually move the wooden crossbars to create momentum, which was quite different from the continuously moving belt we are used to today. The first motorized treadmill was invented in 1952 by cardiologist Robert Bruce (who was called the “father of cardio”) and was used to diagnose heart and lung diseases.
Dr. Bruce was the author of the cardiac stress test, henceforth known as the “Bruce Protocol.” Patients were connected to an ECG while walking and running on a treadmill. Every few minutes, the speed and incline increased, allowing Dr. Bruce and his research colleague, Wayne Quinton, to see if the patient had heart and lung defects.
Before this test, the patients were checked with an ECG in the supine position and at rest. With the availability of a treadmill and the ability to control speed and incline, the Bruce protocol has become the standard for diagnosing CAD and assessing the prognosis of the disease in otherwise healthy people.