Golden Era for Trad Climbing Hardware Development?

There's such an array of interesting active and passive devices that have come and gone over the decades. These days developments seem to be mostly incremental improvements on earlier designs with the occasional new concept introduced. 

After Friends were made available in the late 1970s opening up a new era in protection hardware, what year(s) saw the most developments in hardware occur and new products coming to market?

IMHO one needs to look back well before Friends, which were first widely commercially available caming device. I think the golden age was the nearly 20 year period from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s. The development started in the late 1960s (1967) with Greg Lowe's cams. 1970s Stitch plate. Whillans harness. Chouinard asymmetric hexcentric. Late 1970s Jardine's Friends. Culminating in 2005 with Tony Christiansons dual axle cam. Ending with the wire gate carabiner.

I think more recently the progression of assisted braking devices both active and passive has been interesting.

TCUs

The invention of the hard alloy piton by John Salathe and Yvon Coonyard.

All the rest is gravy.

No doubt pin design was a huge leap.

However, I'm interested in the time frame beginning with the introduction of Friends to the market (1978+/-) through the present, with respect to active and passive protection hardware (I neglected to use the modifier 'protection' to hardware). I'm curious what particular year saw the most developments appear on the market. 

I began climbing in the early 90s but I've always had the feeling that the high water mark of new protection hardware coming to market was the generation before mine, sometime in the 1980s. A lot of that gear was no longer produced and/or no longer in mainstream usage by the time I started climbing but I had the impression there was a proliferation of design tweaks that the previous generation explored and that it had sort of plateaued and reached an era of refinement by the time I began climbing. I'm curious to see whether that's true or a prejudiced subjective impression I formed from my historical vantage point, so I'm interested in other folks opinions.

Mack Johnson wrote:

TCUs

What year?

Allen Sanderson wrote:

IMHO one needs to look back well before Friends, which were first widely commercially available caming device. I think the golden age was the nearly 20 year period from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s. The development started in the late 1960s (1967) with Greg Lowe's cams. 1970s Stitch plate. Whillans harness. Chouinard asymmetric hexcentric. Late 1970s Jardine's Friends. Culminating in 2005 with Tony Christiansons dual axle cam. Ending with the wire gate carabiner.

I think more recently the progression of assisted braking devices both active and passive has been interesting.

What specific year would you float if you had to pick one?

(Were Greg Lowe's cams in wide usage in the 60s or an obscurity?)

The 90s were a hotbed of various startup and more mature companies competing on cam designs. Many of them are gone now.

The 2000s seemed to generate a helluva lot of carabiner designs. 2010 on, belay device explosion. Ice gear underwent a similar evolution.

We now seem to be in the Big Climbing era of gear mfg... dominated by a few bigger outfits like Petzl, DMM, Black Diamond et al.

The future is hard to imagine right now, given geopolitical dynamics. Time will tell.

Cherokee makes some excellent points. Post 1990 gear evolution is most pronounced in winter ice/mixed tools, especially hand tools. Admittedly, I have not used them, but I have done enough of the early high end routes with old gear BITD of said old gear I believe I have a reasonable understanding of it. 

All the new belay devices do not, in my opinion, really add much. The old ways/gear were just as safe, and there really isn't any difference in efficiency. 

I don't believe Greg Lowe's cams, in their original form, ever made it to retail market. I never saw them for sale. Tricams, however, are what came from Greg's original designs.

Friends, TCUs, Aliens, in that order are all pre 1990. The most significant advance since then is Totems. Everything else is just modest refinement of pre 1990 designs.

And yes, carabiner design has changed considerably since 1990, but I think it's hard to say how big the effect is. Mostly, you can carry more of them for the same weight. Which is good, because most people carry 2 or 3 times as many nowadays, than most climbers did prior to 1990. For several reasons. 

I forgot to mention BEAKS!

Lovegasoline Love wrote:

No doubt pin design was a huge leap.

However, I'm interested in the time frame beginning with the introduction of Friends to the market (1978+/-) through the present, with respect to active and passive protection hardware (I neglected to use the modifier 'protection' to hardware). I'm curious what particular year saw the most developments appear on the market. 

I began climbing in the early 90s but I've always had the feeling that the high water mark of new protection hardware coming to market was the generation before mine, sometime in the 1980s. A lot of that gear was no longer produced and/or no longer in mainstream usage by the time I started climbing but I had the impression there was a proliferation of design tweaks that the previous generation explored and that it had sort of plateaued and reached an era refinement by the time I began climbing. I'm curious to see whether that's true or a prejudiced subjective impression I formed from my historical vantage point, so I'm interested in other folks opinions.

So, needless to say, I was being a bit facetious with the pin comment.

Truly, cams were revolutionizing. Both for freeclimbing and aid as 5.10 became doable for mortals and big walls like the Nose became far less daunting undertakings when you could walk cams up long parallel sided cracks.

Dead Honest IMO: Using "modern cams" like Camalots, TCUs of all kinds and Totems are just the most incremental improvements. Jardine was just poorly capitalized at first (no half sizes were available originally) and he never brought to market bigger and smaller versions though he clearly had all the engineering chops thinking he had no market. After that it may have been the original friend design coming off patent that led to the refinements that Jardine and then Wild Country never bothered with. Garage dirtbags that wanted to make a little stash designed the first TCUs etc and sold them in parking lots.

All of the refinements are only viable due to the growth of the market. Jardine never thought he could sell 6" cams so didn't bother (though he had them for his personal use).

But it's the Jardine cam itself that ushered in the golden age of safe trad. Nothing after that comes remotely close, imo.

Beaks are just a refinement. Totems a refinement. Belay devices a refinement etc etc.

it's a pretty narrow question, as the OP recognizes. most things mentioned so far are not trad climbing equipment but just climbing equipment. if you define trad climbing as free climbing where you protect from falls exclusively with what you bring with you, then the answer is probably the year totems came out - they do have a fundamentally different design than other cams and their success has validated that design choice. has it changed trad climbing though? anything moderate can and does continue to get climbed with all sorts of gear by people of all levels of experience, and the cutting edge trad climbs are climbed with whatever cams that sponsor the climber, so not that important either.

as far as rock climbing equipment in general, i'd say the current proliferation of progress capture devices and the innovations in how to use them is a mini golden age of its own -it has allowed very average people to climb big things than a decade ago would have been epic once in a lifetime type things.

Eric Craig wrote:

I forgot to mention BEAKS!

Don't forget the RURP!

Ok, yes, RURPS! I have actually used rurps, on a  few different routes, in 3 different decades. I have not actually used beaks. It seems that beaks have largely replaced rurps and to some extent knifeblades. ??

Eric Craig wrote:

I don't believe Greg Lowe's cams, in their original form, ever made it to retail market. I never saw them for sale. Tricams, however, are what came from Greg's original designs.

Lowe cams were sold in the retail market but were not commercially successful. Jardine's Friends were the first commercially successful cam. At the same Friends also allow technically harder routes to be climbed such as Jardine's ascent of The Phoenix (5.13a).

Ok, I will go with what Allen says about Greg Lowe's cams. Thanks Allen. 

Stéphane Pennequin has a great treatise on cams, LINK. 

Allen Sanderson wrote:

Lowe cams were sold in the retail market but were not commercially successful. Jardine's Friends were the first commercially successful cam. At the same Friends also allow technically harder routes to be climbed such as Jardine's ascent of The Phoenix (5.13a).

Well, to be historically accurate the 2nd and 3rd ascents, Hudon and Price respectively, were not done with cams. No question cams make it far, far easier.

Allen Sanderson wrote:

Stéphane Pennequin has a great treatise on cams, LINK. 

A great LINK to an outstanding article.

It brought back many long forgotten things, the early Lowe Cam ad, Bivos, the Yates big cams, and others. Guess I forgot those things because I never owned or used them. 

ilya f wrote:

it's a pretty narrow question, as the OP recognizes. most things mentioned so far are not trad climbing equipment but just climbing equipment. if you define trad climbing as free climbing where you protect from falls exclusively with what you bring with you, then the answer is probably the year totems came out - they do have a fundamentally different design than other cams and their success has validated that design choice. has it changed trad climbing though? anything moderate can and does continue to get climbed with all sorts of gear by people of all levels of experience, and the cutting edge trad climbs are climbed with whatever cams that sponsor the climber, so not that important either.

as far as rock climbing equipment in general, i'd say the current proliferation of progress capture devices and the innovations in how to use them is a mini golden age of its own -it has allowed very average people to climb big things than a decade ago would have been epic once in a lifetime type things.

Also my question wasn't directed to what gear for ex. changed climbing the most. It's more along the lines of design, fabrication, and gear manufacturers putting different stuff out there. It seems like there was a lot of variation on passive and active camming devices as well as chocks (also the 'replaceable bolt' as another tweak). In the early 90s when I began climbing I'd find old issues of climbing mags and there'd be ads for all sorts of unfamiliar gear, some looking even Tinkertoy-ish, others with unusual profiles, proportions, or forms by today's standards. Even though for ex. I spent a lot of time in Yosemite I never came into contact with most of that earlier gear. One would occasionally encounter the first generation Camalots (dual stem but with 3 separate plastic stiffeners sections), maybe a slider nut, some homemade one-off cams, and there'd also be the Eastern European stuff.

On Supertopo Marty Karabin would post images from his climbing equipment museum collection with vast arrays of all manner of gear.