Tom Scott is in the US now, and like most overseas visitors, had to buy health insurance to cover his trip. But he's not taking any chances by climbing on the world's first jungle gym on display in Winnetka, Illinois. The jungle gym, sometimes called monkey bars, was developed by Charles Hinton and patented by his son Sebastian Hinton in 1923. They story we didn't know was the scientific goal of the climbing toy. The reason it didn't make much difference to the children who climbed it was because by the time kids started school, they already knew how to climb trees, fences, and hills. The jungle gym just made it fun for everyone to join in together. Setting one in a school playground gave us the added thrill of possibly falling on gravel or pavement instead of plain grass or soil. Read the story of the first playground jungle gym at the Winnetka Historical Society.
Only Scott could do an interesting 4 minutes on that Jungle Gym.
ReplyDeleteI certainly never would have tied Jungle Gyms to the idea of teaching kids to think in four dimensions.
ReplyDeleteOf course he had to buy insurance when he came to the US--just like us Americans have to buy insurance when we leave the US.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, you have to pay for any medical care you receive, get detailed receipts, then hope your US insurance will reimburse you.
As a kid, I enjoyed playing on the jungle gym. And none of us fell or got hurt.