In 1986, I enrolled in 6 month adult school course for computer operations at the Southern California Regional Occupational Center. One of our assignments was to write a report about computers and present it to the class each time we met. At that time, Apple only had the IIe and IBM had the original PC with other companies making the clones. Well, a couple of weeks ago, while cleaning out one of my cabinets, I found all my reports which were written in longhand. Some of them were related to running so I thought I should transcribe them in digital format and publish them in this blog to show you what was interesting to me 2 1/2 decades ago. This was my first report titled The Advent Of Computer Running Shoes:
A new stride (pun intended) has been made in the manufacture of running shoes. No longer does one have to guess how many miles one has run and at what amount of time it had taken to do it. The two pioneer companies of this technology are Adidas and Puma, and mentioned here are the products that they have come up with so far.
While computers have been used in helping design running shoes, they have never been actually in one until Adidas developed the Adidas Micropacer. The Micropacer has a sensing device built into the midsole, and a display in the tongue. Information given are distance, time, average running pace, and calories burned. Pace and calories burned are taken from calculations based on the distance and time. Suggested retail price for this gizmo is $110.00. It's not clear where to go for resoles of the Micropacer - your usual repair shop or Computerland.
While the Adidas computer device is built in the shoe, Puma has developed a shoe with a built in electronic device which communicates with a microcomputer. After finishing a run, the shoe is "plugged in" to an Apple IIe or a Commodore 64, after which data on runners' own style (inputted during initial calibration) is recalled from the disk. The inventor - Dr. Peter Cavanaugh, Professor of Biomechanics at the Pennsylvania State University states "This running shoe system allows runners to set goals for themselves and input these distance goals into the computer. The program displays goals against actual distances achieved (taken from the data in the shoes) and automatically calculates and displays the miles that need to be run to reach a particular goal". The package includes the shoes, software disk, and connector cable. The price is approximately $200.00, and you still have to buy your own PC.
Just wait, in a year or so, Silicon Valley may be making running shoes. Outlets such as Computerland will have a special running shoe section staffed by computer salesmen in running attire.
The computer shoe has arrived! But can it balance a checkbook?
My present comments: Back then, some of us who couldn't afford to buy running shoes every few months went to a shoe repair shop to have them resoled, something unthinkable nowadays. Wow, Commodore 64! Remember those? I wonder how many of those shoes they actually sold. High end running shoes nowadays routinely sell for more than $100 and they don't even come with a built in computer. Forget about GPS in the mid 80's. If those existed then, only the government had access to them. More than likely, the devices used accelerometers which are now familiar to many because cellphones and tablet PC's have them. Apparently Adidas reissued the Micropacer in 2001 thru 2003 and I'm surprised that photos of both the Puma and Adidas still exist on the internet.
Any thoughts and comments regarding those devices mentioned above?
A new stride (pun intended) has been made in the manufacture of running shoes. No longer does one have to guess how many miles one has run and at what amount of time it had taken to do it. The two pioneer companies of this technology are Adidas and Puma, and mentioned here are the products that they have come up with so far.
While computers have been used in helping design running shoes, they have never been actually in one until Adidas developed the Adidas Micropacer. The Micropacer has a sensing device built into the midsole, and a display in the tongue. Information given are distance, time, average running pace, and calories burned. Pace and calories burned are taken from calculations based on the distance and time. Suggested retail price for this gizmo is $110.00. It's not clear where to go for resoles of the Micropacer - your usual repair shop or Computerland.
While the Adidas computer device is built in the shoe, Puma has developed a shoe with a built in electronic device which communicates with a microcomputer. After finishing a run, the shoe is "plugged in" to an Apple IIe or a Commodore 64, after which data on runners' own style (inputted during initial calibration) is recalled from the disk. The inventor - Dr. Peter Cavanaugh, Professor of Biomechanics at the Pennsylvania State University states "This running shoe system allows runners to set goals for themselves and input these distance goals into the computer. The program displays goals against actual distances achieved (taken from the data in the shoes) and automatically calculates and displays the miles that need to be run to reach a particular goal". The package includes the shoes, software disk, and connector cable. The price is approximately $200.00, and you still have to buy your own PC.
Just wait, in a year or so, Silicon Valley may be making running shoes. Outlets such as Computerland will have a special running shoe section staffed by computer salesmen in running attire.
The computer shoe has arrived! But can it balance a checkbook?
My present comments: Back then, some of us who couldn't afford to buy running shoes every few months went to a shoe repair shop to have them resoled, something unthinkable nowadays. Wow, Commodore 64! Remember those? I wonder how many of those shoes they actually sold. High end running shoes nowadays routinely sell for more than $100 and they don't even come with a built in computer. Forget about GPS in the mid 80's. If those existed then, only the government had access to them. More than likely, the devices used accelerometers which are now familiar to many because cellphones and tablet PC's have them. Apparently Adidas reissued the Micropacer in 2001 thru 2003 and I'm surprised that photos of both the Puma and Adidas still exist on the internet.
Any thoughts and comments regarding those devices mentioned above?
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