Credited to New Zealand. The idea derives from land diving in Vanuatu and the Oxford Dangerous Sports Club jumps of the 1970s; New Zealand's claim is the safe cord and the first commercial operation.
How it began
In the 1980s Auckland builder AJ Hackett and Chris Sigglekow set out to make jumping on an elastic cord predictable enough to repeat safely. They took the problem to New Zealand's Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and came away with a formula for the behavior of the cord rubber. In 1986 they tested a cord with a weighted punching bag at the Greenhithe Bridge in Auckland, then jumped themselves.
Hackett and business partner Henry van Asch opened a year-round public site at the Kawarau Bridge near Queenstown on November 12, 1988. On the first day 28 people paid $75 each to jump from the 43 meter bridge. Hackett's company also dates a commercial site at Ohakune to March 1988.
Before it existed
Two earlier practices lay behind it. On Pentecost Island in Vanuatu, men dive from wooden towers about 35 meters high with vines tied to their ankles, a ritual associated with the yam harvest. In the 1970s members of the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club made experimental jumps on elastic cords. Sigglekow had tried a jump with a homemade cord and a parachute harness at the Pelorus Bridge in Marlborough, which did not go as planned. None of this was offered to paying members of the public.
How it works
The cord is made of many strands of rubber. Hackett has said a single strand snapped at 6.7 times its length but at four times its length used only 15 percent of its breaking strain. The working rule was to take the height of the jump, divide by four, and subtract a couple of meters for the jumper and the harness webbing to get the cord length. Early jumps used a parachute harness and went feet first. Hackett then devised an ankle tie so the jumper falls head first, and that became the standard form.
How it spread
The Eiffel Tower jump drew worldwide press coverage. After Kawarau, Hackett opened sites in Normandy, France, and in Cairns, Australia, in August 1990. The Cairns site was the first purpose-built bungy tower. Sites in Las Vegas and Bali followed in 1994 and 1995, and a jump from the Macau Tower opened in 2006. In 1997 the partners separated their businesses, with van Asch taking the New Zealand sites and Hackett the international ones.
Who pushed back
The early jumps were unauthorized. Police ordered Hackett and Sigglekow not to jump from the Auckland Harbour Bridge in 1986, and then asked Television New Zealand to run a story warning people against jumping off bridges, which publicized the idea instead. After his jump from the Eiffel Tower on June 26, 1987, Hackett was arrested and, by one account, briefly jailed. To open at Kawarau, Hackett and van Asch had to raise money and get permission to restore the old bridge and add a platform and walkways.
What lasted
In 1989 Hackett and van Asch wrote a Bungy Code of Practice, which became the framework for the joint New Zealand and Australian bungy jump standard. The Kawarau opening is widely described as the start of adventure tourism in New Zealand, and Hackett was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2017 for services to adventure tourism.
Where it stands today
The Kawarau Bridge site still operates and, according to Hackett's company, draws more than 500,000 visitors a year. Queenstown gained two more sites, the Ledge in 1997 and the Nevis in 1999, where jumpers leave a gondola 134 meters above the Nevis River. The company reported its millionth customer in July 1999 and marked 25 years of commercial bungy in November 2013.
