The word "bungee" originates from West Country
dialect of English language, meaning "Anything thick and squat", as
defined by James Jennings in his book "Observations of Some of the
Dialects in The West of England" published 1825. Around 1930, the name became
used for a rubber eraser. The word bungy, as used by A J Hackett, is "Kiwi
slang for an Elastic Strap". Cloth-covered rubber cords with hooks on the
ends have been available for decades under the generic name bungy cords.
In the 1950s, David Attenborough and a BBC film crew brought
back footage of the "land divers" (Sa: Naghol) of Pentecost Island in
Vanuatu, young men who jumped from tall wooden platforms with vines tied to
their ankles as a test of their courage and passage into manhood.A similar practice,
only with a much slower pace for falling, has been practised as the Danza de
los Voladores de Papantla or the 'Papantla flyers' of central Mexico, a
tradition dating back to the days of the Aztecs.
A tower 4,000 feet (1,200 m) high with a system to drop a
“car” suspended by a cable of “best rubber” was proposed for the Chicago World
Fair, 1892-1893. The car, seating two hundred people, would be shoved from a
platform on the tower and then bounce to a stop. The designer engineer
suggested that for safety the ground below “be covered with eight feet of
feather bedding”. The proposal was declined by the Fair’s organizers.
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