George Nissen, who invented the modern trampoline, died at the age of 96 due to complications from pneumonia at UC San Diego Thornton Hospital in La Jolla.
He “was a true sports pioneer,” Steve Penny, president of USA Gymnastics, the sport’s national governing body, said in a statement. “His vision, innovations and passion sowed the seeds for trampoline’s worldwide popularity.”
Nissen trademarked the name “trampoline” but it eventually became the
generic term for the apparatus that has proliferated in so many American
backyards.
