George Bernard Hansburg was born on October 24, 1887 in Poltava, Ukraine (now Russia). He was the second son of Bernard and Celia Hansburg, German Jewish immigrants who went to Ukraine during Otto von Bismarck's unification wars. Bernard Hansburg was a merchant, who bought produce in Germany to sell in Russia.
Hansburg was educated in Ukraine, then emigrated alone to New York City in 1906, arriving at Ellis Island at the age of eighteen.
Hansburg put himself through night school and the Art Students League, learning English and acquiring the design and drafting skills that would support his later career as an inventor.
Hansburg settled his family in Brooklyn, New York, and worked as a salesman while developing his early inventions. Accounts differ, but the pogo stick was invented sometime between 1909 and 1919. It became a fad of the Roaring Twenties, and it was featured in a dance number in the "Ziegfeld Follies. " He got the idea for his invention from a Burmese tale about a young bride whose father, hoping to spare her from soiling her wedding clothes in mud puddles, put a cross-piece on a post and had her jump across the street. Legend has it that the bride's name was Pogo.
By developing an internal spring for the tubular stick, Hansburg devised the invention that would enable him to devote the rest of his life to designing and manufacturing his own creations. There is no evidence that Hansburg patented his invention until 1957, but he is given undisputed credit for the pogo stick in a field of inventors who were straining to invent the array of jumping, bouncing, and leaping devices that fascinated society in the early twentieth century. Between the time of Hansburg's arrival in New York City and his patent of the pogo stick, more than forty patents were granted for pedocycles, springing stilts, grasshopper-shaped spring shoes and "exercise sticks" that attempted to duplicate the pogo stick's self-generated forward movement.
Hansburg's first patent, in 1919, was for a self-propelled wheel toy operated with an elastic bank and a propeller. This was followed by a child's tricycle with sidecar, patented in 1925. In his most productive years, from the 1930s to the 1950s, he invented a series of baby walkers, strollers, bathtubs, and high chairs whose stable designs ensured that an active child could not accidentally tip them over. The "Babee-Tenda" was an infant seat that permitted the child both safety and freedom of movement by placing the chair in the center of a table. The "Bathmaster" was a baby bath equipped with thermometers for water and room temperatures, and an infant scale. The "Gate-Yard" was a playpen with a swinging side gate for easy access.
From the 1960s until his death, Hansburg invented several items for retirees, including a leg support, a golf-putting guide, and an adaptation of the pogo stick for exercising, as well as a telescoping stilt device that allowed the stilts to be adjusted to the height of the user. In the beginning, Hansburg assigned his designs to manufacturers who then employed him. His first such arrangement was with the Fort Mohansic Chair Company in Ohio, which produced the "Babee-Tenda" and hired Hansburg to train its sales force.
After a short period of manufacturing his own baby walkers under the title of the Mama Car Corporation of Long Island, New York, Hansburg made an arrangement with the Ideal Toy Corporation, which gave him an entire floor of its Jamaica, New York, facility to develop and manufacture a baby walker.
Working as a team with his second wife, they set up the Master Juvenile Products Corporation in Walker Valley, New York, to manufacture the pogo stick and all of Hansburg's infant furniture designs. The couple operated Master Juvenile Products from 1947 until his retirement in 1969, living and working on a 1, 000-acre property that contained their factory and home. After retiring to Hallandale, Florida, Hansburg endowed the University of Miami with funds to develop his design for a hospital bed, but the final product did not materialize.
Given his lifelong commitment to products for children, one might suppose that he had a particular fondness for them, but this was not the case. Though genuinely concerned for the safety of infants - he invented the "Babee-Tenda" after seeing his own granddaughter fall over in a high chair - he was not particularly interested in children or especially affectionate. He did not become a naturalized citizen of the United States until the age of eighty-two, and died in Miami, Florida.
An agnostic, Hansburg did not raise his children with any formal religious training.
Although somewhat secretive about his past, refusing to divulge or celebrate his birthday, Hansburg held a very high opinion of his native land, believing the Russians were superior in both intelligence and imagination. He made several fortunes in the course of his lifetime but was not focused on business as a goal in itself. To him, money was strictly a tool used to develop his inventions. He had a special gift for persuading others to realize his designs, but many of his inventions were never patented because of his suspicion of business deals and contracts. He once advised his son to "never sign your right name to a contract" because of possible bad consequences.
Hansburg was an intelligent and dignified man who spoke with a slight Russian accent.
In 1906 Hansburg married Sophie Werner, an émigré from Vilna, Lithuania. They had five children.
Hansburg's first wife died in 1945. During his two years at Ideal, Hansburg met Frances Michtom, whom he married in 1947; they had no children.
