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Erik of Oakland
Gym climber
Oakland
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Topic Author's Original Post - May 10, 2009 - 01:33pm PT
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I'm trying to fill gaps in my knowledge about the advent of cams. I'm not particualrly young nor particularly n00bish, but I wasn't on the climbing scene when cams came out and can't fully appreciate their impact on climbing.
My broad sense looks like this:
pre-1970s: no cams. In the Valley, climbers protected routes with pins early on, then started to use nuts and hexes later
1970s: Ray Jardine and Greg Lowe independently came up with the first cam prototypes. Jardine markets his as "Friends" and free-climbing standards rose
1980s: more of the same. Seems like most major manufacturers have adopted a TCU-style cam
1990s: more of the same. BD comes out with a double-axle cam on a single stem. Aliens appear
2000s: a flood of micro-cams
anyway, I was hoping to elicit commentary from those who closely followed the advent of cams over time with special interest in Yosemite, but am also interested in whether cams quickly caught on outside the Valley in alpine environments (like Chamonix or the Alaska Range)
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RDB
Social climber
way out there
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May 10, 2009 - 02:32pm PT
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Couple of threads here on Super topo on the history of "cams". But I think it is easy to say now that Greg Lowe came up with the idea of cams with "crack jumars", and then showed the idea and proto types to Jardine. Jardine then ran with the idea and Friends were the result.
Jello aka Jeff Lowe sets the story straight here.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=385308&msg=387813#msg387813
More here:
http://www.wildcountry.co.uk/AboutUs/AboutUs1/History1/
Pretty hard to find a pin on a free climbing rack after 1973 ('72 Chouinard catalog influence) in a developed area and hard not to find at least a couple of Friends on a free climbing rack after 1978.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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May 10, 2009 - 03:27pm PT
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Nkane
Trad climber
New York, NY
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May 10, 2009 - 03:29pm PT
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To me, the history of cams raises the question of whether the clean climbing revolution would have "stuck" if it had hit earlier, or if cams had been invented later.
There seems to be about a six year gap between the clean climbing revolution of '72 and the commercial introduction of cams in '78. If that gap had been longer, would climbers have reached the limits of free climbing on nuts and hexes and gone back to nailing on hard routes?
(BTW, this all took place long before I was born.)
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RDB
Social climber
way out there
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May 10, 2009 - 04:21pm PT
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Mark Hudon posted here about doing the 2nd ascent on hexs of Jardine's Phoenix which was one of the earliest .13s and done with Friends.
The clean climbing revolution was well under way before 1972 and Chouinard's catalog and the gear he would produce. Royal Robbins had seen the need to eliminate pins long before with his writings on passive protection and his FA and clean ascent of Nut Cracker standing out. I found it even more interesting that Robbins and Chouinard made the 2nd ascent of Nutcracker together in 1967
So if you wanted to be more precise clean climbing in the US obviously started before 1967 and continued at least to .12d/13a if not farther.
Friends made a huge impact on one of our local climbing areas with extremely parallel sided granite cracks. When TCUs arrived for the smaller cracks another entire list of thin cracks were opened to free climbing because of it.
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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May 10, 2009 - 11:54pm PT
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Royal really was most responsible, as has been said
before, in terms of bringing nuts to America and
Yosemite from England. In fall 1966 we used them, Royal
and Whillans and I, in Eldorado Canyon. I still hadn't
completely made the transition when I did the Nose in
June 1967, but we brought a handful of nuts with us,
didn't use them too often. Cams seemed to come in just
shortly after nuts, though I doubt I could pinpoint the
year or source, certainly if I recall it well preceded
Jardine and Greg Lowe... in some certain definition of the
word "cam."
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murcy
climber
San Fran Cisco
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May 11, 2009 - 12:00am PT
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Awesome, Tarbuster; thanks!
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Erik of Oakland
Gym climber
Oakland
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Topic Author's Reply - May 11, 2009 - 09:12pm PT
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any more thoughts? how about the impact on alpine climbing?
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RDB
Social climber
way out there
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May 11, 2009 - 09:59pm PT
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Alpine? at least for my own climbs....zip.
Although I used them on occasion, originally they seemed too heavy to bring along when nuts and pins would generally do.
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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May 12, 2009 - 03:10am PT
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Actually, I now believe I made an error (based on communication with Jello) in the essay referenced by the link above. I had said: "Abalakov Cam was the first application to climbing of the principle of a constant-angle curved surface, with a cam shape based on the mathematical logarithmic spiral"
But this is most likely incorrect. Modern cams are of course modeled after logarithmic spirals, but the Abalokov cams were probably not designed with the logarithmic spiral in mind; rather, they were cut and shaped from sections of round to closely approximated the constant-angle curve shape.
Steve Grossman posted a beautiful picture of the Abalakov cams on this thread:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=269620&tn=80
I recently got an email from Alex Bertulis, who had spoken with Abalokov sometime prior to 1974. Alex states unequivocally that "There is no question in my mind that Abalakov came up with the idea of making a cam as a protection device. He explained to me in detail this evolution."
This is what I had implied in my Ascent article. I had also talked with several of my Russian climbing friends, who also believe that Abalokov came up with the cam concept originally. Alex also said, "He (Abalakov) had experimented with numerous devices until he came up with cutting the cam (1/5) from a flywheel.".
Greg and Mike Lowe are the first to document the "constant intercepting angle" cam shape in their 1975 spring loaded cam patent (filed Aug. 16, 1973), although the term "logarithmic" is not found in their patent. Link to their patent below:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=3877679.PN.&OS=PN/3877679&RS=PN/3877679
My thoughts now is that perhaps there might have been simultaneous independent discovery of the cam for use in climbing protection.
ps: here are some old cam patents: http://www.deuce4.net/web/CamPatentsClean.pdf
If you want to research patents, the referenced patents in each patent are the key to a thorough search. The 1901 patent is especially interesting, as the variable width design using the pivot seems like it has some potential, if redesigned for climbing. Maybe Theron could make some prototypes!
Edit: it's interesting to note the first cams that were both useful and available to the public in the western world were Jardine's Friends, late 70's. Next were Lowe Tri-cams, around 1981 or so. But the Russian climbers had apparently been using Abalokov cams, which are essentially equivalent in function to Tri-cams, since the early 70's.
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aguacaliente
climber
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May 12, 2009 - 04:57am PT
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Warning, the following is based on math, not experience with designing cams myself:
If you locate the pivot point correctly, as Deuce 4 suggested, it is possible to make a close approximation to the logarithmic spiral by cutting a section out of a circle, like the way the Abalakov cams are cut. For a section of about 90 degrees of arc, if I did the math correctly, the radius will be in error by a maximum of about +/- 1%. For a 14 degree cam angle, an arc of 90 deg, where the small radius is about 2 cm and the large radius is about 3 cm, the error is about 0.2mm at most. That's small compared to surface irregularities in rock.
The error would get bigger if you tried to make the cam cover a wider range of arc.
Looking at the Abalakov cams picture, the pivot points appear to have been chosen to approximately achieve this. Someone could measure them and figure out what the cam angles are. So I don't know if he was trying to achieve a logarithmic spiral, but it looks as if he knew something similar to that was desirable.
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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May 12, 2009 - 05:02pm PT
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Aquacaliente- thanks for that interesting note.
I just did some very rough calculations on the cam angle of the Abalokov cams pictured in Grossman's post, and it looks like Abalokov nailed it. I came up with about a 15 degree camming angle on those puppies.
using this formula:
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RDB
Social climber
way out there
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May 12, 2009 - 06:02pm PT
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Jeff Lowe from other threads...links above:
"Oli's statement of the development of spring-loade cams is true, although Greg applied for the patent in 1972, and it was granted in '73, not '75.
But to the point of Ray's character:
I was there in '71 or '72 at my brother Mike's house in Gunnison, CO. Mike, Ray and I were Outward Bound instructors and therefore had something in common. Greg was over from Utah to work with Mike on the camming concept, which he'd been developing since 1967. Jardine had been invited to a spaghetti dinner, and Greg offerred to show him the current state of development of his new protection device for climbing, but first Ray had to sign a non-disclosure/non-compete agreement.
Ray was a quick engineering study and soon grasped the essentials of the constant-angle cam and spring-load concept. It was all-in-all a very convivial and exciting sharing among friends. This is why, several years later, when word began to leak out about Ray's secret devices, Greg sent the first of a string of registered letters to Jardine, seeking to come to some sort of agreement over his breach of faith. All the letters were refused, so it was that, finally, after Friends came out on the market and Mark Vallance began producing them under license from Ray, that Greg finally filed suit. To make a long story a little shorter, Mark, who is a stand-up guy, but had not been told the whole story by Ray, finally agreed to pay Greg a settlement for the use of the camming concept. Who needs an enema when you've got a friend like Ray?"
"John-
I can see how that correspondence would have confused you. Abalokov DID have cams (of a sort - not true constant-angle) when he came to the US in '75. That's because I had given him a spring-loaded and a passive cam, in 1974, when I was in the Pamirs. It really was clear to me in '74 that he had no inkling of cams or constant angles in rock climbing protection, before I carefully and at some length explained them to him, and answered his questions, through an interpreter at the mountineering camp he was hosting.
I doubt any real evidence will surface to disprove this explanation of the genesis."
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Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
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May 13, 2009 - 12:35am PT
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I think the double-axle Camalot appeared in the late '80's.
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WBraun
climber
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May 13, 2009 - 01:13am PT
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The Camalot
The guy that invented them lives a few doors down the street from Karl Baba.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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May 15, 2009 - 01:39am PT
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Double axle Camalot was designed to bypass Jardine's patent. the extra range was just bonus.
Peace
Karl
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Jun 13, 2010 - 03:37pm PT
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I just picked up a set of three mint original large batch, "Patent Pending" Friends.
Shot showing a #4 which entered the market after the patent came into force. The same thin pullbar stock as the original set of three was still in use.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Jul 17, 2010 - 02:04pm PT
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Camming Bump!
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SuperTopo on the Web
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