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| Captain Kirk in 1969 Jennings Compound AD |
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| Bill Shatner using a recurve before he turned to the "Dark Side" |
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| William Shatner with a Shakespeare Recurve |
| Captain Kirk Killed the Recurve!
by
Larry Vienneau
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I know what you are
thinking…what the heck does Captain Kirk have to do with
Shakespeare Archery? Well, believe it or not, he has a lot to do with
it. OK, I admit it, I might be a bit of a Star Trek nerd but William
Shatner using his Star Trek fame helped end traditional archery (for
a while anyway). Jennings was the first manufacturer of the compound bow.
They used William Shatner of Star Trek fame to promote
a new “Space Age” bow design. It was a clever use of celebrity and
technology which ultimately lead to the decline of the recurve and the birth of the
compound. William Shatner owned several Shakespeare recurves and was friends
with Shakespeare Archery Executive and Pro Dick Wilson and Shatner
also knew Ernie Root.
Holless Wilbur Allen
changed the direction of archery forever when he discovered that he could make
a new, faster bow by sawing off part of the limbs of a recurve bow
and attaching pulleys to the new ends. In the early 1960s, he decided to
try improving the current design of bows by using the pulley’s mechanical
advantage to pull more weight than normally possible.
As Holless was exploring
different ways of using the pulleys, he discovered that by using one with an
offset axle (eccentrics), he created one of the biggest advantages of compound
bows, “let-off”. When coupled with a cam shape instead of a round pulley,
the draw length, weight, and force curve could be changed and improved.
On June 23, 1966,
Holless applied for a patent “Archery bow with draw-force
multiplying attachments”; in December of 1969, it was granted. He
teamed with Tom Jennings, and the first compound bows began to be manufactured.
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| William Shatner in one of the first ads for a compound bow in 1968 |
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| Shatner with Recurve 1967 |
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 today as he reminisces about how he killed the recurve recent photo© 2012 by Jeff Greenwald | . |