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| John Deere parts are a part of March Madness history |
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What farmer hasn't fashioned makeshift parts, replacement equipment pieces or, in some cases, even new inventions out of metal? In the case of Arthur Ehrat, an Illinois farm boy and retired grain elevator manager from Virden, Ill., the John Deere cultivator spring he used to test a fresh idea in the 1970s altered the way basketball would be played forever.
Ehrat took an old metal basketball hoop, added a magnet and a John Deere cultivator spring to create what is known today as the breakaway basketball hoop. The patented idea, nicknamed, "The Rebounder," has become a fixture in gyms, allowing players to dunk more easily, without damaging the rim or backboard.
"My nephew, Randy Albrecht, was coaching basketball at St. Louis University at the time, and we were talking about how the players were bending up the rims and breaking bones trying to dunk the ball," Ehrat remembers. "I thought...that ought to be an easier problem to solve than the ones we were having spreading fertilizer and chemical. I went and bought a $20 rim and sat on the porch with it trying to figure out what I could do."
Fascinated with magnets as a young boy, Ehrat decided to devise a way to make the rim break away under pressure with a magnet. Using a hinge similar to the ones found on the heavy doors at the elevator to make the hoop swing up and down, some bolts and several springs, he worked with a local farmer-mechanic to turn the idea into reality.
Ehrat found most of the springs he tried were too loose or too tight to bounce back with the right velocity. After giving the problem some thought, he considered how easily the springs on a John Deere field cultivator moved as the equipment bounced through a field, and figured the springs had to have about the right amount of tension. He got a spring from his local John Deere dealership and gave it a try. The rest, they say, is history.
"I was already familiar with the patent process, because I had applied for and received two patents for equipment changes for spreading fertilizer and chemical," he says. "It took me six years to get the patent for the hoop, but it finally came through in 1982."
In the 17 years the patent was in effect, Ehrat spent a good deal of time and money defending the patent, which he licensed to nearly every basketball hoop manufacturer. The Smithsonian Institute and each of his seven grandchildren have one of Ehrat's early prototypes. In addition, he loaned his original prototype to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., for display for about four years.
"I don't know a lot about basketball. I did not have time to be interested because of the responsibilities on the farm. Our school gym had no rim or ball," he says. "When I watch games now, I wait for the dunk. I love to watch them dunk the ball."
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