Howard Head

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Howard Head (born 1914 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, died 1991) was an aeronautical engineer who is credited with the invention of laminate skis and oversized tennis racket. He was the founder of Head Ski Company in 1948 and later Prince Manufacturing Inc. The U.S. patents for the laminate skis and oversized tennis racquet are in the name of Howard Head.

[edit] Laminate Skis

In 1947, while he was working as an aircraft engineer for Glenn L. Martin Company at Baltimore, Head went for skiing for the first time in his life. He was frustrated with the quality of the clumsy and heavy wooden skis which made skiing very difficult for the beginners. So he decided to develop lighter and more efficient skis that could make skiing much easier for everyone. He left his job and devoted all his time and energy for developing the skis and supported himself with earnings from poker.

The skis developed by Head were based on the structural principles that he had learned during his experience as aircraft engineer. He used a technique known as metal sandwich construction. The first skis made by him consisted of two light layers of aluminum bonded to sidewalls of thin plywood, with a center filling of honeycomb plastic. Although these skis were very light, they all broke quite quickly during trials. But Head did not give up. He was encouraged by a pro-skier Neil Robinson, who assured Head that he would love to use his skis if they did not break. Throughout that winter Head would make a ski pairs, send it out to Robinson who retuned it back to Head after it broke. Head figured out the flaws of his design, came up with modifications, send the new ski pair to Robinson and the process repeated. By the end of the winter of 1947, head came up with skis that were as strong as wooden skis but were half as heavy.

In order to make his skis more efficient Head made several other changes like substituting plywood with honeycomb plastic, covering bottom of ski with special plastic to avoid the problem of icy bottoms and even introduced steel to harden the edges of the ski. The new improved skis were almost as heavy as the conventional ones, but were stronger and easier to control. The Head skis made skiing a sport that anyone could learn.

In 1950 Head founded the Head Ski Company. The company was very successful and in a couple of years it was making the majority of skis in the United States. Later the Head Ski company diversified into tennis and other racquet sports. They made the Arthur Ash racquet, which was an aluminum honey-comb racquet. Howard Head later sold the company and retired.

[edit] Oversized Racquet

After retiring, Head decided to take lessons in tennis and for this purpose he got himself a tennis ball machine, which was manufactured by Prince Manufacturing Inc. Although Head was not very good at tennis, he figured out that the equipment for the game needed a lot of improvement. To begin with he became the majority share-holder and chairman of the board of the Prince Man. Inc. While Head considerably improved the design of the ball machine, he still did not get any better at the game. He figured it out that it because of the small sweet-spot of the tennis racquet. In order to make the game of tennis easier, Head came up with the design of oversize raquet. He filed and obtained a patent that covered tennis racquets with size 95-135 square inches. He also pionered the development of Prince Graphite racquet. Although Head revolutionized the game of tennis, he himself never got too good at it.