A jungle gym (called a climbing frame in
British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadl ...
) is a piece of
playground
A playground, playpark, or play area is a place designed to provide an environment for children that facilitates play, typically outdoors. While a playground is usually designed for children, some are designed for other age groups, or people ...
equipment made of many pieces of material, such as
metal pipes or
rope
A rope is a group of yarns, plies, fibres, or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form. Ropes have tensile strength and so can be used for dragging and lifting. Rope is thicker and stronger than similarl ...
s, on which participants can climb, hang, sit, and—in some configurations—slide. Monkey bars are a part of a jungle gym where a user, hanging in the air, swings between evenly spaced horizontal bars. In
Australian English
Australian English (AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and ''de facto'' national language; while Australia has no official language, Eng ...
, the term "monkey bars" is sometimes used to refer to the entire jungle gym.
History
The first jungle gym was invented in 1920 and patented by lawyer Sebastian Hinton in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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. It was sold under the
trademark
A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from ot ...
ed name Junglegym™. Hinton's second prototype "jungle gym" is still standing at
Crow Island School
Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois, is an elementary school operated by Winnetka Public Schools. It is significant for its progressive philosophy and its International Style architecture. The design of its building was a collaboration betwe ...
in
Winnetka, Illinois
Winnetka () is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States, located north of downtown Chicago. The population was 12,316 as of 2019. The village is one of the wealthiest places in the nation in terms of household income. It was the secon ...
.
The term "monkey bars" appears at least as far back as the 1930s, though Hinton's initial 1920 patent appeals to the "monkey instinct" in claiming the benefits of climbing as exercise and play for children, and his improvement patents later that year refer to monkeys shaking the bars of a cage, children swinging on a "monkey runway", and the game of "monkey tag".
When Sebastian Hinton was a child, his father, mathematician
Charles Hinton
Charles Howard Hinton (1853 – 30 April 1907) was a British mathematician and writer of science fiction works titled ''Scientific Romances''. He was interested in higher dimensions, particularly the fourth dimension. He is known for coining t ...
, had built a similar structure from bamboo with the goal of enabling children to gain an intuitive understanding of
three-dimensional space
Three-dimensional space (also: 3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a geometric setting in which three values (called ''parameters'') are required to determine the position of an element (i.e., point). This is the informa ...
through a game in which numbers for the x, y, and z axes were called out, and each child tried to be the first to grasp the indicated junction. Thus, the abstraction of
Cartesian coordinates
A Cartesian coordinate system (, ) in a plane is a coordinate system that specifies each point uniquely by a pair of numerical coordinates, which are the signed distances to the point from two fixed perpendicular oriented lines, measured in ...
could be grasped as a name of a tangible point in space.
[J' is for Jungle Gym"](_blank)
from Winnetka, Illinois Historical Society
Safety
To reduce the risk of injury from falls, jungle gym areas often have a thick layer of
woodchips, sand or other impact-absorbing material covering the ground. The American
National Safety Council recommends that playgrounds have at least of such material and since 2011 has banned the use of woodchips.
Playground Safety – National Safety Council
Gallery
Image:Climbing-thing.jpg, A small jungle gym
Image:ManonMonkeyBars.jpg, Hanging from monkey bars
Image:RevJungleGym MobiusClimber.jpg, Landscape structures mobius climber
Image:RevJungleGym SpacenetClimber3040.jpg, Landscape structures spacenet climber
File:Boy in front of jungle gym, 1967.jpg, Boy in front of jungle gym, 1967
File:Jungle gym.JPG, A jungle gym in a school yard in Sweden, 2012
File:Japanesehighschoolgirlonmonkeybars-dec19-2014.jpg, Japanese schoolgirl on some monkey bars ( 雲梯), 2014
File:Råcksta jungle gym.jpg, A jungle gym in Sweden, 2016
USMC-16939.jpg, Military variant of the monkey bars
See also
* Jungle Jim (disambiguation)
*Outdoor playset
An outdoor playset is a structure erected outside for children to play on and around.
Components
Typical components of an outdoor playset include:
* Towers. In a playset, a tower is a vertical structure with one or more decks placed at various ...
* Brachiation
References
External links
* {{Commons category inline, Jungle gyms
1920 introductions
Playground equipment