Talk:Jungle gym
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The Winnetka Historical Society article I just posted is an interesting source on the invention of the jungle gym. Further expansion could include the following research:
- find the complete paper from which that web page is drawn
- find (and photograph!) the first jungle gym, which the article says resides at Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois
-- Rbellin|Talk 06:32, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Monkey Bars
By my understanding, "monkey bars" refers to a very specific playground structure, whereas "jungle gym" is more generic. "Monkey bars" is essentially a ladder-like structure laid flat and elevated several feet off the ground (perhaps 6 or so) which children use by swinging from rung to rung with their hands, much like a monkey swinging from branches. A jungle gym, on the other hand, is pretty much any climbing structure. Is this distinction a regional thing? The part about the two terms being synonyms should be deleted if no one can support this, or clarified at very least.
- We always used the terms interchangeably. It's possible that it's regional, but I never heard the term "monkey bars" applied to the overhead ladder, only to the jungle gym. Now, looking it up, Webster's says monkey bars is "3-D framework of horizontal and vertical bars from which children can hang and swing"; jungle gym is "a structure of vertical and horizontal bars for use by children at play". Now, those 2 sound the same to me, although the phrasing's not quite identical--which makes me wonder why it's NOT identical (except that someone has to proofread those 225000 definitions :-).) It does note that Junglegym was originally a 1923 trademark, so it seems likely to me that Junglegym was a trademarked name for a variety of monkey bars--although the latter dates from 1955, so who knows what the generic name was before that! Elf | Talk 17:38, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
