Board logo

subject: The history of bumper boats [print this page]


The history of bumper boats

The history of bumper boats

Bumper boats are a amusement park ride similar to bumper cars on water. The ride was invented during the early 1970s by Edward A. Morgan, co-founder of Arrow Development Company, a famous manufacturer of amusement park rides.Bumper boats are an amusement park ride in which people drive tiny boats in a pool or pond and try to crash into each other for fun. In a patent application related to the ride, its inventor wrote, "one of the thrills of operating amusement park boats of this type is to initiate collisions with other similar boat within a relatively confined pool." The small boats can hold one or two people and have over-sized fenders that resemble the inner tube of a large tractor tire inner tube. The boats are powered by either electric or gasoline engines.

Edward A. Morgan, co-founder of amusement park ride manufacturer Arrow Development Company, invented bumper boats manfuacturer in the early 1970s. Morgan applied for a U.S. patent on the ride in 1972. The U.S. government granted the patent in 1974. The patent includes detailed design and construction guidelines, including a maximum speed of four miles per hour and circular shock absorbers around the boat to protect riders.Bumper boats are similar in concept to the much older and more ubiquitous bumper cars. Like bumper boats, the point of bumper cars is to collide with other cars. Bumper cars date to the early 1920s. Bumper car collisions tend to be more jarring than bumper boat .

Arrow Development Company, later known as Arrow Dynamics, was the original maker and patent owner of the bumper boats ride. Arrow was founded in 1946 by Edward Morgan and Karl Bacon as a builder of carousels and other rides. The company's fortunes took off when Walt Disney hired it to build many of Disneyland's original rides, such as Snow White's Adventures and Casey Junior Circus Train. The company gradually became mostly a roller coaster maker over the years. It went bankrupt in 2001. Rival ride maker S&S Power bought Arrow that year and maintains S&S Arrow as a division today. It primarily makes roller coasters.

Several companies still make bumper boats supplier today. These companies include J&J Amusements, Foster Manufacturing Corporation and Bumper Boats Inc. Today's bumper boats include some added features, such as mounted water guns for shooting opposing boat drivers.

source:news playislands




welcome to Insurances.net (https://www.insurances.net) Powered by Discuz! 5.5.0   (php7, mysql8 recode on 2018)