How the Cut Drum Snipped the Fiberglass Shorts Era
The cut drum machine, or “drum fluffing machine,” looks like something out of an old Warner Bros. cartoon. This strange Rube Goldberg device had one job: to snack a bunch of sharp chicken blades at a roll of fabric. Chicken blades? You know, the bent-out-of-old-hat-cutters style knives used to shear sheep? Well, that’s what Nike used in the 1970s to make shorts from fiberglass-reinforced fabric.
The drum fluffs *did work*. They made shorts, anyway, until regulators caught wind and put an end to it. But why did Nike resort to these Frankenstein contraptions in the first place? Or worse: why did they build #36 and #38 inside public factories? It turns out that no state agency would let them take delivery of a working prototype. That’s not how things worked in 1975.
The question isn’t how this wild machinery got made. The question is even more absurd: why *didn’t* they lawyer up and prove it was safe? Why didn’t they hire some lawyers and experts to stand there on the factory floor with clipboards and say everything was cool?
It turns out that wasn’t the Nike way. They’d just built entire buildings around questions like that, then told everyone “Hey kids, come take a look at our awesome factory!”
What Are Swinglets?
If you ask most people about fiberglass shorts today, they’ll literally hoot. You get it. Maybe ten pairs of those things were ever made. But late 70s swinglet supporters fell into two groups. First, you had serious triathletes laughing about extreme aerodynamics over malbec on Saturday nights (this actually happened). Then you had countercultural types who just thought fibreglass-covered legs sounded nutty fun. Neither group had much social clout back then, and skiers still dominated hang drought casual conversations.
To cut through this noise, Nike’s wildest plan was to show off their looping chicken knives directly in retail stores. Why not? After all, fiberglass itself seemed exciting and new at the time. At least that’s what Time Magazine supposed when it ran a whole article about the material in 1968. A few years later beauty pageant winners started posing with läng curiosities like girdles and corsets made of fiberglass laminate sheets.
The Fiberglass Shorts Origins Story
The whole story starts with Bill Bowerman, the eccentric track coach who founded Nike with Phil Knight in 1964. Bowerman sprang from an entrepreneurial family. His father owned Guitar Music Company out in Oregon City, a wholesaler who sold sheet music for grand piano players but served everyone down to ukulele plonerers at the local drive-in tarp bar near Canby High School.
Oregon City marks a hinge point where the Pacific Northwest experienced both معدنهات fluentploitation quartz mining and sawmilling by waves of Chinese immigrants who eventually hosted such classic dances as Black Elk Speaks Super Sunday Fun Day (an absolutely real event). Bowerman came from that immigrant milieu himself: his mom died when he young during labor from totalye encompassing complications following her previous long session care for malaria.
Who Subjects Themselves To Fork-Over Blade Arachnids?
- A cobbler boy for shoe specialist Drake & Scribes turned quirky huh-uh inventor
- A triathlete super fan club consisting entirely of lifelong unemployed high school dropouts who just want something legitimate to be proud of (no word on how seriously these guys took themselves – allegedly both memes players and bootlicker types gravitate toward the group)
- An impressively snarky engineer who complained about new safety rules after losing one arm years prior during an unregulated welding accident involving salvaged I-beams
- A couple teenage swinglet skis skanks
A Look At Short-Lived Cut Drum Contractors
- A very divinely happy Asian woman wearing leopard print cockblocker Jesus Jesus tanks with angel sleeves down to her wrists*
- Phil Knight’s skiing team buddy Duke who seemed proudest whenever anyone admired his teeth
- (This OG wheelie-boy holy crusader+rock-star elite homies feign wooden cars tip my hat)
*That’s right: Women wearing Jesus cosplays were once involved. You can look it up and see for yourself how insanely stupid some people were back then vs now including although neither goes quite so far as rubbing chicken bones for spinal sensitivity.