By Mary Bellis
There is a legend that, "either George Hansburg or a anonymous German was traveling through Burma when he meet a poor farmer with a daughter named Pogo. Pogo wanted to go to temple every day to pray, but couldn't because she had no shoes to wear for the long walk through the mud and rocks. So the poor farmer built a jumping stick for her, and when George Hansburg or the anonymous German returned home, he made and sold a similar jumping stick of his own."
Yes, the above story is just a legend and not true, however, George Hansburg did patent the first pogo stick in 1919.
A boatload of wooden pogo sticks were exported from Germany to the US based Gimble Brothers Department Store in 1919. However, the wooden sticks somehow rotted and warped during the journey. That same year, Gimble asked George Hansburg, an Illinois baby furniture and toy designer, to improve the design of the wooden pogo sticks. Hansburg created a painted all metal, enclosed-spring pogo stick, and manufactured them in an Elmhurst, N.Y. factory.
In an effort to promote pogo sticks, George Hansburg taught the Ziegfeld Follies girls how to pogo. In 1920, Ziegfeld featured a marriage performed on pogo sticks. The roaring twenties proved to be the height of popularity for pogo sticks and all kinds of pogo stick stunts and publicity tricks occurred.
In 1947, George Hansburg invented the Master Pogo, an improved steel pogo stick with a longer-lasting spring.