Treadmills have a dark history: Here is what you need to know
If you are asked to name one home fitness machine that is frequently used by people, your answer is most likely going to be ‘the treadmill.’ It is one of the most popular training devices in gyms too. But do you know that the treadmill you see today is very different from what it was when it was first invented? Let’s see how and why the device was invented and how it got its name!
Treadmills used to grind corn
In 1818, a civil engineer called Sir William Cubitt (1785-1861) invented the treadmill, also known as the running wheel. Cubitt grew up in a family of mill workers, and he invented this device to grind maize. He called it the ‘treadwheel.’
Cubitt’s initial attempts at the treadwheel’s design took many different forms, including one design where the treadwheel had two wheels you walked on and their cogs interlocked. However, his most popular design was installed at the Brixton Prison in London. It involved a wide wheel and prisoners pressed down with their feet on step-like grooves embedded in the wheel. This moved the wheel, presenting them with the next step. Imagine a person doing log-rolling, only the log-like wheel was fixed in one place. The Brixton treadwheel was connected to an underground machine that ground corn.
As many as 24 prisoners, standing side-by-side along the wheel, could be kept busy using this treadwheel. Some treadwheels installed at other prisons were smaller though, but most treadmills soon included partitions so the convicts could not socialize while working them. They slogged for 10 hours daily during summers, and clocked seven hours in winters.
Treadmills become a device for torture
Around the end of the 19th century, the British had begun reforming prisons and providing necessities like food and blankets to the prisoners. Bribing to guards became rampant as a result. People started worrying that the poor would commit crimes just to be imprisoned and get free stuff. These luxuries to the prisoners needed to be offset by their labour, ideally painful labour.
The long hours on the treadwheel were mind-numbingly boring and needless to mention, exhausting. This device caught the attention of Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline as the perfect solution to the free luxuries problem. It would keep the prisoners busy, mindlessly, and exhaust them.
At first, these treadmills were used to grind corn or pump water. But soon they became a mere method of punishment, and prisoners were now grinding nothing but air. Nearly 109 out of 200 prisons in England, Scotland and Wales were using these by 1842, as per historian David Shayt.
Treadmill becomes a training machine
Over time, the hypothesis that the device would cure a criminal by sweating him out, began being questioned. Convicts obviously hated it and no real results were coming out of the entire exercise. In fact, a prisoner with heart disease died on the treadwheel in Durham prison, England. Soon, there were as many as one death each week due to it! Slowly, with increasing focus on human rights, reform of prisoners through education, and the treadmill as a means of torture device in prisons phased out.
The treadmill resurfaced in US when a patent for the same was applied for in 1911 by a man named Claude Lauraine Hagen. He filed a patent for a ‘training machine’ which had a treadmill belt. The patent was granted in 1913 and was very forward-thinking for its time. For those unaware, a treadmill belt is the part that rotates around the base while the treadmill machine is being operated. It is this belt that allows you to move on the static base.
This was the first treadmill that was designed as a tool to improve your health and resembles our modern treadmill. In 1952, Dr. Robert A. Bruce, an American cardiologist, also known as the ‘Father of Exercise Cardiology’, invented the first motorised treadmill at the University of Washington. It was used to deliver a stress test called the Bruce Protocol. Patients were made to walk and run on the treadmill while their ECG was recorded to diagnose underlying heart diseases.
Then, American mechanical engineer William Staub created a home fitness machine in 1960s. He called it the Pace Master 600. He manufactured and sold home treadmills in New Jersey and used it himself, right up to the age of 96!
Over the years, the fundamentals of the treadmill have not changed much, but they have gone through several modifications.