By Scott Meacham
The inventor of the Nautilus exercise machines created a source of wealth and jobs.
Arthur A Jones, the inventor of Nautilus exercise machines, grew up in Seminole, OK. His father practiced medicine. His mother graduated from medical school, reportedly the family had a dozen more members in the medical profession.
But medicine was not for Arthur Jones. It was the Great Depression. He dropped out of high school, road the rails, and served in the Navy in World War II. After the War he made a living as a pilot and collected exotic animals for zoos and circuses. He produced some not-very-good movies (including Voodoo Swamp) and had a syndicated TV show, Wild Cargo.
Later in life, after Arthur made millions on the Nautilus, he built an 8,000 foot runway in his backyard in Florida so he could take off and land his Boeing jet. He had more than 600 crocodiles and alligators, dozens of elephants, and a relentless affinity for poisonous insects and snakes—all of which inhabited his personal estate in Florida.
How did a man like that, as the New York Times said, come to transform the fitness industry?
Prototype development
Although Arthur eschewed the practice of medicine (and smoked Pall Malls), from youth on he had an abiding interested in physiology. According to the Los Angeles Times, he built his first exercise machine while in he was living at the Tulsa YMCA in 1948. For the next two decades, Arthur developed prototypes, then in 1970, he patented and launched his first Nautilus machine, the “Blue Monster.”
This invention was innovation personified. There was some weight lifting equipment in the market, but mainly strength-building was the province of barbells, dumbbells, and kettlebells. Recognizing that muscles are stronger in some positions than others, Arthur designed the Nautilus using chains, sprockets, and cams to create variable muscle resistance throughout each entire repetition.
Arthur’s secret sauce was his concept of training. In Muscular Development in 1970, he wrote that muscles had to be worked hard—but with fewer repetitions. His “high intensity” workouts were brutal but quicker than other training regimens.
In entrepreneurial terms, he expanded the total accessible market, seemingly over night, by changing the way people thought about exercise and going to the gym. The Nautilus machine was easy to learn. You didn’t have to be a professional athlete or a weightlifter to use it effectively.
At a time when many trainers believed that weight-training would create athletes that were too muscular for certain sports, Arthur published articles maintaining that lifting weights was safe, could make any athlete faster and protect them from injuries. When Dr. Michael O’Shea opened the Sports Training Institute in New York City with Nautilus equipment and reported that famous people including tennis greats Billie Jean King and John McEnroe were training on his equipment, the Nautilus became all the buzz.
From track teams to football, from business people to people at home, Nautilus made the benefits of exercise seem possible and attainable. Arthur made millions selling the machines and then more millions franchising Nautilus training Centers. Eventually he sold the Nautilus business for $23 million. Today, the reorganized Nautilus Inc. includes the Boxflex and Schwinn brands and more.
Source of wealth, jobs
Arthur Jones created a mega brand that was and is the source of wealth and jobs. Every person who works out at a gym owes him a thumbs up. His machine led to the advances in personal training that so many of us enjoy in homes and gyms today.
Oklahoma entrepreneurs continue to build mega brands — Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores, Sonic, Hobby Lobby, Express Services, and QuikTrip to name a few. Innovators here are re-imagining industries, such as inventing faster and more efficient ways of producing energy with advanced battery technology, like the founders and teams at Spiers New Technologies and Ten-Nine Tech in advanced battery technologies.
To my knowledge, unuilike Arthur Jones, none of Oklahoma’s other innovators started their paths with crocodiles or poisonous snakes, but they do share Arthur’s tenacity, vision, and a thirst for doing old things in new ways.
Scott Meacham is president and CEO of i2E Inc., a nonprofit corporation that mentors many of the state’s technology-based startup companies. i2E receives state support from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology and is an integral part of Oklahoma’s Innovation Model. Contact Meacham at [email protected].
