Nike’s Nutty Professor: The Story of Air Inventor Frank Rudy
It wasn’t athletes like , , , or even their most illustrious shoe designer, , who gave Nike their most iconic contribution to the footwear world, but a mad scientist named Frank Rudy. Rudy not only invented the air sole, but he also had to convince someone it was legit enough to put into a running shoe. Phil Knight was inevitably the sneaker CEO who most closely matched Rudy’s out-there energy, and he was willing to take the risk on Rudy’s air-filled sole device. Soon, the idea that was once deemed wacky became Nike Air, the most recognisable shoe cushioning system ever, which propelled the Swoosh – right when they needed it most – to become the multi-billion dollar corporation that it's today.
The Man Who Invented Air
Born Marion Franklin Rudy in 1925, the man who helped become what it is today didn’t start out as an employee of the brand or even a shoe designer at all, but an aeronautical engineer. During his career in aerospace, Rudy worked with NASA on the Saturn and Apollo rocket engines and invented the ultra-high precision micro-ball spherical bearing used by the military – whatever that is! In his 84 years on Earth, Rudy held more than 250 patents, but of course, none of them are more important to the footwear world than his patent for a gas filled membrane fitted into the sole of a shoe. You know it today as Nike Air.
The story of the most iconic footwear cushioning technology ever begins when Rudy was working at NASA and introduced to a process called ‘blow rubber moulding’. Rudy, being the genius he was, brilliantly had the idea that he could use the process to make a great cushioning system for athletic footwear. He then created an air sole, which was filled with highly dense gas sealed in by a rubber membrane.
The Pitch
After the air sole was perfected, Rudy began pitching the idea to any footwear brand that would give him a meeting. Eventually he got a sit-down with Phil Knight, the co-founder and CEO of Nike, in March of 1977 at Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. Along with his business partner Bob Bogert, Rudy pitched Knight on the air cushioning system, which Knight details in his memoir Shoe Dog: ‘One look at him told you he was a nutty professor, though it wasn’t until years later that I learned the full extent of his nuttiness. (He kept a meticulous diary of his sex life and bowel movements).’
Knight goes on to recount Rudy’s pitch: ‘Mr. Knight, we’ve come up with a way to inject… air… into a running shoe.’ And his initial scepticism of the technology: ‘I’d heard a lot of silliness from a lot of different people in the shoe business, but this. Oh. Brother.’
After Rudy gave the full pitch, complete with incoherent equations and drawings on a blackboard, Knight still wasn't convinced: ‘Air shoes sounded to me like jet packs and moving sidewalks. Comic book stuff.’ After realising Knight wasn’t biting, Rudy shrugged and said that he understood, and that he’d tried pitching the idea to adidas too. That was all Knight really needed to hear. The athlete-turned-CEO then asked if he could fit the air soles into his own shoe and give them a try. ‘Not bad, I said, bouncing up and down’. He then went for a six mile run to test them out, noting that they were unstable but ‘one heck of a ride’.
That night, he and fellow Nike exec Rob Strasser went to dinner with Rudy, where he explained the science behind the air technology even further. Knight was convinced enough to tell Rudy that maybe they could do business. He handed Rudy over to Strasser, Nike’s top negotiator, to close the deal. Strasser offered 10 cents for every pair of air shoes sold, Rudy countered with 20 cents per pair, and according to Knight, they eventually settled ‘somewhere in the middle’.
Air: The Early Days
Nike sent Rudy to their Exeter, New Hampshire factory, which by that time was their de facto research and development department. You can think of it as Nike’s first Innovation Kitchen. Jeff Johnson, Nike’s first employee who had started as a shoe salesman, was then working in Exeter handling product development. When Rudy gave Johnson the air sole to inspect, he did the same thing Knight did: stuck them in his shoes and went for a run. Knight explains in Shoe Dog: ‘But Johnson worried that the bubble would cause friction. His foot felt hot, he said. He had the start of a blister. He suggested putting the air in the midsole as well, to level out the ride.’
Development of Nike’s air-cushioned sole would become the most ambitious and expensive project for Nike up to that point. The biggest problem Nike faced in getting air into the midsole was finding a foam that would be sturdy enough to hold the airbag in place while also standing up to the continuous pounding of the shoe on the road under a runner’s foot – yet also not too stiff to detract from the cushioning provided by the air unit. An air sole would be pointless if the foam around it was too dense.
After months of development in Exeter, the air sole was ready. Now it wasn’t just an air bubble inside of a shoe, it was a registered trademark. Nike Air with a capital ‘A’.
The Tale of the Tailwind
The first shoe to utilise the new tech would be the Nike Air Tailwind, a running shoe first released in 1978. It was decided that the upper of the Tailwind would actually be the same as the Nike LDV, one of the brand’s best-selling models at the time (you may be most familiar with the LDV today as one of the two shoes combined to make the stacked sacai x Nike ). The Tailwind would have a straight last, which is a sole that’s rectangular and symmetrical, usually intended for people with wider feet. The wider sole helped Nike fit the first generation Air sole into the shoe. Originally designed with a plain grey upper, it was decided that the Tailwind should look more high-tech and futuristic, so the original colourway featured a silver mesh and grey suede upper with royal blue Swooshes. Developed in Exeter and made in Japan, the Tailwind would be Nike’s most expensive shoe ever at the time, retailing for $50.
Knight describes the Tailwind in Shoe Dog: ‘The brainchild of M. Frank Rudy was more than a shoe. It was a work of postmodern art. Big, shiny, bright silver, filled with Rudy’s patented air soles, it featured twelve different product innovations.’
Nike’s plan was to debut the Tailwind at the Honolulu Marathon in December 1978. Nike were also ready with advertising for the shoe with an ad on the back cover of the December 1978 issue of Runner’s World. Even before that, in September 1978, Nike salesmen took sample pairs of the Tailwind on the road to introduce retailers to Air technology, and in October, they took it to the San Diego Marathon to allow runners to check out the air-filled sneaker weeks before it was available for purchase. After Nike’s Air team worked many extra hours to meet the deadline to get the shoes to Hawaii, the first 230 pairs were off the line and shipped to Honolulu and distributed to six stores. They sold out in 24 hours. After additional pairs were produced and shipped to running shoe stores in other states, it became a hot seller. Until there was a problem.
Unfortunately, the original run of Tailwinds had a defect – but don’t worry, it was nothing to do with Rudy’s air sole. The decision to make the shoe silver ended up being a critical mistake. The upper of the shoe was tearing due to bits of metal in the silver dye that were rubbing against the shoe’s mesh material, basically acting as microscopic razors slicing the fabric apart. A recall was issued, and half of the first generation of Tailwinds ended up in the trash. Back in the 70s when most brands built their running shoes in less durable mesh than today, it was called a ‘blowout’ if the upper fell apart. This was an unfortunate term in regards to the Tailwind, as many consumers assumed the Air sole was defective when they heard the shoe was blowing out, not the upper. As word of mouth spread, ‘Air’ was tarnished. But as we now know, it wouldn’t be for long.
The silver mesh was changed to plain grey for the next production run of the Tailwind, and Nike gradually won back consumers with the new and improved design. Air was a success after all. By 1980, the Air sole was incorporated into other Nike running shoes including the Columbia trainer and Mariah racer. In 1982, Nike debuted the now-iconic , the first basketball shoe with Air. The Air Force 1 proved that Air was a suitable cushioning system for all sports shoes, not just running.
Air Becomes an Icon
Rudy would continue to consult and work with Nike for the next few years, and he even became perhaps the earliest critic of the . At the time of the Air Jordan 1’s design, it had the smallest Air unit Nike had ever put into a shoe. No one at Nike who was rushing to get the shoe into production and ready for Michael Jordan to wear during his rookie season seemed to care about this, but Rudy pointed out that the Air in the heel of the shoe wasn’t even functional.
It’s also a little known fact, and contrary to Nike’s long held story, that visible Air was a concept in the works long before famed designer Tinker Hatfield came along. It was an idea that Nike’s team in Exeter had toyed with for years.
The early days of visible Air development and the hesitance by Nike execs to run with it is explained in the book Swoosh: The Unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There by J.B. Strasser and Laurie Becklund: ‘The overwhelming feeling was that it might prove there was air in the shoe, but it also might plant a doubt that the shoe was sturdy. After all, the question was asked, how safe would you feel riding on see-through tires?’ The concept of visible Air was dismissed as a gimmick by some at Nike, who thought consumers wouldn’t care about seeing the Air unit ‘in action’, so to speak.
But Rudy didn’t want to give up on visible Air or the Air sole in general, which by 1985, Nike were considering phasing out. Nike were in financial trouble at the time, experiencing a sales slump and their product was viewed as stale by consumers as brands like Reebok eclipsed them with their popular new shoe, the Freestyle, which capitalised on the aerobics boom of the mid-80s. Nike needed something new and exciting, and fast.
A hilarious anecdote about Rudy’s persistence and passion for his baby, the Air sole, is detailed in the Swoosh book: ‘He called Exeter, often pleading in hour-long conversations to keep Air in the forefront of Nike. Ned Frederick, who liked Rudy, could do little more than console him. Finally, Frederick resorted one day to making a continuous loop tape in which he uttered noises like ‘Uh hmm”, and ‘Yeah’, and ‘You’re right about that, Frank’. When Rudy called, he put on the speaker phone, turned on the tape, and went about his business.’
In the end, it was Rudy who was right all along. Whether his persistent phone calls helped convince them or not, eventually the head honchos at Nike greenlit the visible Air concept, and the technology was perfected, debuting in the Hatfield-designed running shoe in 1987.
The Air Max 1 released alongside the brand’s other saving grace, the which was the first model in Nike’s new cross-training category (which also featured Air, albeit not visible). Consumers loved the visible Air unit, and the Air Max 1 stands today as one of Nike’s most popular and iconic sneakers ever. And it was only the beginning for visible Air. The Air Max 1 would be the first of thousands of sneakers that gave wearers a look inside the bubble.
Today, Nike Air has expanded – both literally and figuratively – into the most recognisable, imitated, and downright cool athletic shoe cushioning system ever. ‘Nike Air’ became the symbol of the fresh, new Nike that would then dominate the athletic shoe industry from the 1990s forward. From the Tailwind to the Air Max 1 to the to the and beyond, Frank Rudy’s invention and Phil Knight’s willingness to take a risk (or maybe just his rivalry with adidas) changed the footwear industry forever.
We all wish you could have lived another 84 years too, Frank.