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Kōrero: Inventions, patents and trademarks

A. J. Hackett's bungy jump from the Eiffel Tower

Bungy jumping was almost unknown outside New Zealand until 1987 when its inventor, A. J. Hackett, made this illegal jump from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Hackett's invention was a modern version of a sport practised by the Pentecost Islanders of Vanuatu, who dive from high wooden platforms with vines tied to their ankles.

Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi

AJ Hackett Bungy New Zealand

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Me pēnei te tohu i te whārang

Mark Derby, Inventions, patents and trademarks – The ‘no. 8 wire’ tradition, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/mi/video/25390/a-j-hacketts-bungy-jump-from-the-eiffel-tower (accessed 4 June 2026).

He kōrero nā Mark Derby, i tāngia i te 11 May 2010, updated 1 February 2015.

Comments

Keith Sharp
22 October 2014
I think this item may need to be corrected. A J Hackett certainly commercialised bungy jumping but he did not invent it, as this article claims. I believe it was the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club members who made the first modern bungy jump in 1979 from the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. They went on to make similar jumps in the US from the Golden Gate Bridge and the Royal Gorge Bridge. By 1982, they were jumping from mobile cranes and hot air balloons. AJ Hackett was inspired by this and made his first jump in New Zealand in 1986. Although he went on to make a business out of it, he cannot be said to have invented the sport. That distinction must go to the British.