Issue after issue was filled with his opinions on training. Reflecting later on Arthur’s successes, Golden Age bodybuilder Bill Pearl recalled that,Īt the beginning of the Nautilus reign, Arthur used the editorial pages of Iron Man magazine to promote his concepts. What differed with Arthur and his Nautilus equipment was the intensity of interest in these products. Weight training machines existed prior to Arthur’s creation, a point previously discussed on BarBend. To be exact, the first Nautilus machine was officially delivered to a customer on 30 November 1970.(8) The age of Arthur Jones had begun.Ī post shared by HIT-Gym Birth of the Machine Age Fixated on the importance of varying resistance throughout a lift, in much the same way people use chains or resistance bands today, Jones introduced the first of his Nautilus machines to the American public in 1970. Settled once more in the United States, he began experimenting in his training and also in his training equipment. Devoid of options and facing expulsion from his then residence in Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe), Jones fled the continent.(7) From Jones’ autobiography, titled … And God Laughs, we know that he returned to the United States during the 1960s on a point of destitution.(6) His business interests and wealth had been decimated by a string of conflicts raging across Africa during this time. It would take a move back to the United States for him to fully commit himself to health and fitness. During the 1940s, he and an individual named Percy Cunningham even built their own exercise machines at a YMCA based in Tulsa before Jones’ nomadic lifestyle brought him to Africa.(5)Ī post shared by Mark N Lori Strough the 1930s to the late 1960s, Jones continued to train on and off, often in a sporadic fashion. In 1939 he welded hooks to his barbells that allowed him to add chains to either end.( 4) This meant that he could vary the resistance throughout the exercise, a theory which would later underpin Jones’ entire machine enterprise. Frustrated with the lack of innovation found within these journals, Jones took to designing his own equipment. As he would later comment, back then the only real sources of information available to him came from Bob Hoffman’s Strength and Health Magazine, or Peary Rader’s Iron Man. This, as one may have guessed, was not an obvious pathway into the health and fitness industry.īut Jones’ interest in weight training dated to the 1930s when he was still a teenager. In time, he began producing television shows and movies, oftentimes centering on his African travels, some of which appeared on ABC during the 1950s.(3) Johnston in later life, Jones expressed no interest in studying medicine, or studying of any kind.( 1) He left his home in his early teens and began traveling around North and Central America, eventually enlisting in the US Military during the Second World War.Īfter the war ended he operated an unscheduled airline, hauling cargo from several countries in Latin America, later moving into importing monkeys and exotic animals from Africa.(2) This would prove a lifelong interest of Jones. In total, the Jones family claimed fourteen members in the medical profession, so it may have seemed inevitable for Jones to become a doctor in his own right.īut he didn’t. There, his mother graduated from medical school, furthering his family’s medical credentials. Early in his life, his family was moved to Seminole, Oklahoma, where Jones’ father operated a medical practice. Jones was born in Arkansas in late 1926 just prior to the Great Depression, which tragically transformed the American landscape. A post shared by Cyberpump! is on the left, with Dick Butkus on the right.
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