Timeline

From the circus strongmen of the 1860s to the founding of York Barbell

Roughly a century in ten parts. The chronology is approximate at the edges and crowded in the middle. Where individual figures are covered in more detail, they are linked.

Decade IThe 1860s

The decade in which strength becomes a public spectacle in the modern sense: the touring circus and the music hall, both products of growing cities and railway networks, become the venues where strongmen perform for paying audiences. Donald Dinnie, the Highland Games champion, is reported to have carried the Dinnie Stones across the Potarch Bridge in 1860. Louis Uni, later Apollon, is born in 1862; Louis Cyr in Québec in 1863; Eugen Sandow in Königsberg in 1867; Edmond Desbonnet, the future chronicler of French strength culture, in 1867 or 1868. In the United States, Dio Lewis's "New Gymnastics" popularises exercise with light apparatus.

Decade IIThe 1870s

The future stars are children; the Highland Games circuit, with Dinnie at its head, is the most visible arena of competitive strength in Britain. The amateur sporting bodies that will later take over lifting begin to form: the Amateur Athletic Association in England is founded in 1880 and the Amateur Athletic Union in the United States in 1888. In 1878 the Cyr family moves from Québec to Lowell, Massachusetts, where Cyprien-Noé Cyr starts calling himself Louis.

Decade IIIThe 1880s

Professor Attila — Louis Durlacher — runs his gymnasium in Brussels, where he mentors the young Sandow and helps popularise the bent press as a stage lift. In Saint Petersburg, Dr Vladislav Krajewski founds an amateur weightlifting circle in 1885. Cyr serves as a policeman in Sainte-Cunégonde, Montréal, until December 1885, and in March 1886 defeats David Michaud in Québec City for the title of Canada's strongest man. On 2 November 1889, Sandow answers the challenge of Charles Sampson ("Samson") at the Royal Aquarium in London and is declared the winner (see Feats). In the same year Apollon appears in a contest in Lille with a set of railway-car wheels, the forerunner of Apollon's Wheels.

Decade IVThe 1890s

The most concentrated decade of the music-hall era. Cyr tours Britain from November 1891 to March 1892; on 19 February 1892 at the Royal Aquarium in London he cleans and presses a 273¼-lb dumbbell with one arm. He and Sandow never meet in a contest. Sandow tours North America under Florenz Ziegfeld and appears in Chicago during the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Cyr's back lift of about 4,300 lb (usually quoted as 4,337 lb), with eighteen men on a platform, is made in Boston on 27 May 1895 (see Feats). The Saxon Trio — Arthur Saxon and partners, later his brothers Kurt and Hermann — begins performing in 1897. George Hackenschmidt wins the Russian weightlifting championship in 1898 and, in Vienna that summer, the European Greco-Roman wrestling title. Sandow launches his magazine Physical Culture, later Sandow's Magazine, in London in 1898.

Decade VThe 1900s

The Iron Game becomes a business. Sandow's "Great Competition" at the Royal Albert Hall on 14 September 1901, judged by Sandow, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the sculptor Charles Lawes, is generally considered the first major bodybuilding contest; the winner receives a gold statuette of Sandow. Alan Calvert patents the Milo adjustable barbell and founds the Milo Barbell Company in Philadelphia in 1902 (see Implements). Desbonnet founds La Culture Physique in 1904. Saxon publishes The Development of Physical Power (1905), in which he records his bent-press record of about 370 lb; Thomas Inch publishes Scientific Weight-Lifting the same year. Hackenschmidt beats Tom Jenkins for the world catch-wrestling title in 1905 and loses it to Frank Gotch in 1908, the year his book The Way to Live appears.

Decade VIThe 1910s

The field begins to formalise — and is interrupted by the First World War. The British Weight Lifters' Association is formed in 1910 and refounded in 1911 as the British Amateur Weight Lifters' Association (BAWLA), giving British lifting a standard set of rules. Inch wins the title of Britain's Strongest Man in June 1910. In 1911 Sandow is appointed Professor of Scientific Physical Culture to King George V. Katie Sandwina is a headline act with the Barnum & Bailey circus, lifting her husband overhead nightly (see Feats). Calvert founds Strength magazine in 1914. Hermann Goerner serves in the German army and loses an eye to shrapnel.

Decade VIIThe 1920s

A rich decade for records, and the decade in which Olympic lifting settles into its modern form. Goerner is credited with a 727-lb (330 kg) one-hand deadlift in Leipzig on 8 October 1920 (see Feats). Saxon dies in 1921. Henry "Milo" Steinborn arrives in the United States from Germany and popularises heavy squatting. Charles Rigoulot wins Olympic gold at Paris in 1924. Sandow dies in London in 1925. Attila dies in New York in 1924; Siegmund Klein, who marries Attila's daughter Grace in 1927, opens his own Manhattan gym in 1926. Mail-order courses boom: George Jowett, Earle Liederman and Charles Atlas, whose company with Charles Roman is founded in 1929. From the 1928 Olympics the international programme is three two-hand lifts — press, snatch, and clean and jerk — and the one-hand lifts drop out of Olympic competition.

Decade VIIIThe 1930s

The American consolidation. Rigoulot makes the first conclusive clean and jerk of Apollon's Wheels in Paris in 1930 (see Feats). Bob Hoffman founds Strength & Health magazine in 1932 and builds York Barbell into the centre of American lifting; in the 1930s he takes over the Milo Bar-Bell Company and its magazine. In Britain the two-hands anyhow and the bent press remain on the BAWLA list: Ron Walker sets a British heavyweight two-hands anyhow record of 310½ lb in 1937. The AAU holds its first Mr. America contest in 1939, won by Roland Essmaker — the point from which physique contests begin to detach from lifting.

Decade IXThe 1940s

Wartime suspends international competition; American lifting consolidates around York. John Grimek wins the AAU Mr. America in 1940 and 1941, after which the rules are changed to bar repeat winners. Goerner, after the war, is held for a time in a Soviet-administered prisoner-of-war camp before settling near Hanover. John Davis wins the 1946 world heavyweight title and in 1949 makes the second recorded clean and jerk of Apollon's Wheels, in Paris.

Decade XThe 1950s

The end of the era covered by this archive. American heavyweights, led by Davis and Norbert Schemansky — who cleans and jerks Apollon's Wheels in Lille in 1954 — compete with the Soviet team that will dominate the following decades. Edgar Mueller publishes Goerner the Mighty in 1951; Goerner dies in 1956. Hackenschmidt is still alive and writing in London. In 1953 David P. Webster rediscovers the Dinnie Stones, mislaid since the First World War. Late in the decade anabolic steroids enter American lifting, with consequences for everything that follows; and the Weider brothers' magazines begin to take the physique readership away from Hoffman's Strength & Health. The era of the music-hall strongman, the open-challenge implement and the bent press is over.