Bound and Determined

This article discusses recent changes in the design of pogo stick. Entrepreneur Brian Spencer and his father, Bruce, have designed a new pogo, which they call a Vurtego. The father and the son began sketching out a bold new direction in pogoing in the late 1990s. On the suggestion of Bruce Spencer, they designed a tube using air compression rather than a spring. In the garage, Bruce Spencer cobbled together a first prototype from PVC tubing and other plastic parts, and this new pogo stick worked well. The air spring lifted Spencer well off the ground. Through a series of refinements and trials, Spencer discovered that the key factor was the compression ratio. In addition to patenting the design of their stick, the Spencers have now also patented a range of maximum compression ratios, between 2.5 to 1 and 4.5 to 1.