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http://bigwalls.net/climb/mechadv/index.html After an incomparable career of first ascents dating from the 1930s in the various mountain ranges of the USSR, Vitaly Abalakov devoted his life to mountaineering instruction, equipment design, and the promotion of international good will for mountain climbing. Scrounging surplus aircraft materials, he made a variety of innovative tools, including the first hauling pulley, the first adjustable tube chock, inventive rope clamps, titanium pitons and crampons, retrievable ice screws, and the V-thread rappel anchor (not, strictly speaking, a mechanical device, but nonetheless an ice-climbing breakthrough). His invention of the Abalakov Cam was the first application to climbing of the principle of a constant-angle curved surface, with a cam shape based on the mathematical logarithmic spiral. Designed so that a load produces a rotational force, the logarithmic cam shape allowed for a single device to fit in a range of crack sizes without a change in the loading pattern, making it predictable and stable. Abalakov shared his ideas with the world, and freely distributed information on their design and construction. In 1973 Greg Lowe filed for a patent for a sprung loaded version of the Abalakov Cam http://www.americanalpineclub.org/AAJO/pdfs/1987/341_inmemoriam_aaj1987.pdf A mechanical engineer by profession, Abalakov developed various kinds of climbing equipment, many of them constructed of lightweight titanium.
Climbing magazine #79 June 1983 Dear Editor, The Lowe brothers have recently started production of a camming nut they call the Tri-Cam. They claim that they developed the design. It is interesting to note that a nut of the same design showed up in this country in 1975. It is called the Abalakov cam. Alex Bertulis wrote an article about visiting Russian climbers which appeared in the 1976 American Alpine Journal and Off Belay #25 which described and illustrated the Abalakov cam. The Lowe brothers apparently based their claim to the Abalakov design on their "conceiving" the idea of the constant angle cam. The constant angle cam is a section of a logarithmic spiral and has been used for gripping devices for years. Cam action plate grips have been used in industry to pick up steel plate back as far as the 1950's. They employ the same pivoting spring-loaded constant angle cams as the 1973 Lowe split cam. The only significant design difference between the two is that the plate grip goes over the object to be gripped and the split cam goes inside it. The Lowe brothers also imply in their promotional literature that the Abalakov design is an obvious extension of their split cam design. This cannot be the case. About the only things they have in common are that they both use constant angle camming surfaces and they both are used in rock climbing. The simple and versatile Abalakov cam is a major conceptual departure from the split cam. The Abalakov cam nuts the Lowe brothers are producing appear to be nicely constructed and will make a significant contribution to climbing. It is too bad that they feel they must claim the design. Vitaly Abalakov said during his visit in 1975 that he hoped that someone in this country would produce them without patent restrictions. I do not think he intended to give away the idea as well.
Sincerely, |