Howard Head - Ski Equipment

Ski Equipment

In 1947, Howard Head was an aircraft engineer for Glenn L. Martin Company in Baltimore, and went skiing for the first time. Head was frustrated with the quality of the clumsy and heavy wooden skis, which made skiing very difficult for beginners. He decided to develop a lighter and more efficient ski that could make skiing much easier for everyone. He left his job and devoted all his time and energy to developing the skis and supported himself with earnings from poker.

The skis developed by Head were based on the structural principles that he had learned during his experience as an aircraft engineer. In a warehouse he rented from Albert Gunther Inc in an alley off of Biddle Street in downtown Baltimore, he used a technique known as metal sandwich construction. The first skis he made consisted of two light layers of aluminum bonded to sidewalls of thin plywood, with a center filling of honeycomb plastic. Although these skis were very light, they all broke quite quickly during trials. Head did not give up on his idea, and was encouraged by pro skier Neil Robinson, who assured Head that he would love to use his skis if they did not break. Throughout that winter Head would make a ski pair and send it out to Robinson, who returned it to Head after it broke. Head figured out the flaws of his design, came up with modifications, sent the new ski pair to Robinson, and the process repeated. By the end of the winter of 1947, Head came up with skis that were as strong as wooden skis but were half the weight.

In order to make his skis more efficient, Head made several other changes, like substituting plywood with honeycomb plastic, covering the bottom of the ski with special plastic to avoid the problem of icy bottoms and even introduced steel to harden the edges of the ski. The new improved skis were almost as heavy as the conventional ones, but were stronger and easier to control. Head skis helped to popularize alpine skiing in the U.S.; the innovative equipment made turning significantly easier.

In 1950, Head founded the Head Ski Company, which became very successful. Within a couple of years it was the major supplier of alpine skis in the U.S. The company later diversified into tennis and other racquet sports; its most notable product was the innovative Arthur Ashe racquet, constructed of aluminum honeycomb. Howard Head sold the company to AMF in 1969 and retired. After a number of takeovers and acquisitions, HEAD, N.V. is currently based in Kennelbach, Austria (operational) and Amsterdam, Netherlands (corporate offices).