Bungee jumping is an activity in which a person jumps off from a high place (generally of several hundred feet/metres) with one end of an elastic cord attached to their body or ankles and the other end tied to the jumping-off point. When the person jumps, the cord will stretch to take up the energy of the fall, then the jumper will fly upwards as the cord snaps back. The jumper oscillates up and down until the initial energy of the jump is dissipated.
The word bungee (pronounced bunjie) first appeared around 1930 and was the name for rubber eraser.
In the 1950s David Attenborough and a BBC film crew had brought back footage of the "land divers" of Pentecost Island in Vanuatu; young men who jumped from tall wooden platforms with vines tied to their ankles as a test of courage. This film inspired Chris Baker of Bristol, England to use elastic rope in a kind of urban vine jumping. The first modern bungee jump was made on 1 April 1979 from the 250ft Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, and was made by four members of the Dangerous Sports Club. The jumpers, led by David Kirke, were arrested shortly after, but continued with jumps in the US from the Golden Gate and Royal Gorge bridges, spreading the concept worldwide. By 1982 they were jumping from mobile cranes and hot air balloons and putting on commercial displays.
The first operator of a commercial bungee jumping concern was New Zealander, A.J.Hackett, who made his first jump from Auckland's Greenhithe Bridge in 1986. During the following years Hackett performed a number of jumps from bridges and other structures (including the Eiffel Tower), building public interest in the sport. Hackett remains one of the largest commercial operators, with concerns in several countries.
Despite the inherent danger of jumping from a great height, several million successful jumps have taken place since 1980. This is attributable to bungee operators rigorously conforming to standards and guidelines governing jumps, such as double checking calculations and fittings for every jump. Unfortunately accidents in this sport tend to be of the spectacular, bizarre, and terminal variety. A relatively common mistake is to use too long a cord. The cord should be substantially shorter than the height of the bridge to allow it room to stretch. When the cord reaches its normal length, rather than slowing down, the jumpers speed actually increases. They do not start to slow until the cord has already stretched somewhat, as the cord's resistance to distortion is zero at the natural length, and increases only gradually after, taking some time to even equal the jumper's weight.
