Lange is a major producer of ski boots used in alpine (downhill) skiing, founded in 1948 in the USA. They introduced the world's first plastic ski boots in 1962, and a greatly improved model aimed at the racing market in 1965. After several World Cup and Olympics wins in 1967 and 1968 made them a must-have on the circuit, Lange has remained a force in the racing market ever since. Their boots have equipped five times as many World Cup medal winners as any other brand into the 2000s. The front-entry design introduced by Lange is used by almost every modern ski boot to this day. Lange remains a major brand worldwide.
Bob Lange had been experimenting with plastic reinforced ski boots as early as 1958, but it took some time before the basic design was made usable. The first examples from 1962, built by Lange employee Dave Luensmann, used acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) shells and laces for closure, but were not very successful. A follow-up design released in volume in the winter of 1965/66 used a new thermoplastic shell, hinged cuff, and latching buckles, and became the first commercially successful replacement for leather boots. By 1970 they were almost universal on the racing circuit, and selling hundreds of thousands of examples as the world's leading ski boot brand. Lange entered the hockey market during the 1970s. Lange skates were an outgrowth of their plastic ski boots. Phil Esposito endorsed and used Lange skates. They went out of favor due to their weight and non-traditional looks but had the advantages that they were comfortable to wear and offered more protection than traditional skates.
A major technical misstep in 1970 led to financial difficulties and the eventual sale of the company to Garcia in 1973. Under the new ownership, the company continued development of the classic front-opening ski boot design. Over a series of models, the cuff began extending up the calf of the leg to greatly improve directional control and reduce lower-leg injuries. Garcia ran into financial difficulties of their own, and their suite of ski products was purchased by the owner of Rossignol in 1978. Under their direction, Lange released the famous bright-orange XL-R and Z designs of the 1980s, versions of which remained the racer's choice well into the 1990s. Modern Lange boots have changed little in design since these models.
History
Downhill develops Alpine skiing developed as a specialization from what was generally a cross-country sport. The downhill portions were shallow, short and had to be skied up, so the majority of the day would be spent in the cross-country striding motion.Morten Lund, "A Short History of Alpine Skiing: Frem Telemark to Today", Skiing Heritage Journal, Winter 1996, pp. 6-7
As techniques diverged, especially with the widespread introduction of ski lifts, the market for customized downhill equipment rose. A major advance came with the introduction of the Kandahar binding in the 1930s, which allowed the boot to be locked down to the ski during the downhill portions. This provided more control over "edging", rolling the ski onto its side to generate turning forces. The introduction of the Head Standard ski during the winter of 1950–1951 furthered this evolution by allowing the skis to hold an edge against the snow with much more force, dramatically improving turning performance. They were such a great improvement, the Standard was known as "The Cheater" because it allowed any skier to turn with ease.John Dodge, , Sports Illustrated, 18 December 1961
Like the skis and bindings, ski boots had also evolved from earlier cross-country styles. By the 1950s these were essentially unchanged from the 1800s, consisting of a thick sole with a thinner upper shell of leather, similar to a normal winter boot. A flexible sole allowed the boot to bend forward at the toe to allow the cross-country striding motion. The upper cuff provided little sideways support, as this had not been a serious concern for cross-country. Ideally, for downhill skiing the boot would be rigid side-to-side to transmit rotational forces to the ski, allowing the skier to edge the ski directly. Moreover, in the downhill role there was no need for forward flex of the sole, which was clamped down anyway.
Downhill before Lange This need led to downhill boots that retained the same basic shoe-like style of earlier designs, but were built much stiffer to allow for greater control. These had the serious drawback of being extremely uncomfortable. This was especially true during the breaking-in period, which might last weeks. One solution had the skier lace up the boots and stand in hot water in a bathtub for an hour to soak, then walk around to allow the leather to move to fit the skier's foot. This had the disadvantage of greatly softening the boot, allowing it to wear out much more quickly.
Even if this hot water fitting step wasn't used, strong skiers would wear out their boots in months as the leather softened, and mere weeks if they raced them. This left only a short period of time between the painful break-in period and the time when the boots were too soft to provide good control over the skis. Jean-Claude Killy took to having Michel Arpin ski in his boots while they broke in, giving them to Killy to ski for the few weeks before they wore out. Another solution to improve lateral control was the "long thong", a leather strap wrapped around the boot and lower leg, which came at the cost of eliminating any sort of quick release.
Lange's first attempts Robert B. ("Bob") Lange flew Lockheed P-38 Lightning airplanes for the United States Army Air Forces before leaving to earn a degree at Harvard University, where he studied economics and engineering. It was during this time that he took up skiing, and like many other beginner skiers of the era, found himself dismayed by the relative antiquity of the designs. (Contrast with the Head Standard ski).
Lange had another problem to solve; his size 9-1/2 triple-E wide feet demanded custom boots, which he ordered from Peter Limmer. These were not stiff enough for his liking, so Lange attempted to fix this by cutting strips of fiberglass left over from covering his boat, and gluing them to his boots using polyester resin. This 1948 attempt is the earliest recorded attempt at a plastic-reinforced boot.
After graduating in 1949 he joined his family insurance business in Dubuque, Iowa, but did this only for a short time. Lange opened Hawkeye Plastics Corporation in the basement of the old Brunswick Radio Company factory, which had gone bankrupt during the Great Depression. In 1955 he received his first contract, from the Eska Company also located in Dubuque, when General Motors asked Eska for 30,000 kiddie-cars in the form of the 1956 Corvette. Lange's company produced the plastic Corvette bodies for Eska. Over the next few years the company produced a variety of fiberglass products, including hula-hoops and the interiors for refrigerators.
Throughout, Lange continued to experiment with improvements to ski boots, buying numerous pairs to cut them up and see if they could be re-enforced to make them stronger. Lange was not the only designer to attempt this, and several boots soaked in epoxy or other glues were available in the 1950s. None of these offered any great improvement, and lacing them up was even more difficult than before. Lange had built several models with epoxy or polyester by 1958, later claiming to have skied a successful all-plastic boot in 1957.
Royalite Fiberglass simply didn't have the right combination of features for an all-plastic boot. As part of the Corvette contract, Lange's Hawkeye Plastics had sub-contracted the seats to another local plastics company, run by David Luensmann. Luensmann had made the seats for the cars by vacuum-molding Royalite, an ABS plastic from Uniroyal. When Lange's Hawkeye went out of business, enough of this material was left over to experiment with boot designs, and Lange asked Luensmann to try it.
Luensmann used strips of the material in a heat press to melt them into a single shell. He handed the results to Lange the next year, in the summer of 1961. After trying them that winter, Lange asked Luensmann to join him in a new company dedicated to making plastic boots. For mass production, the two built a vacuum press to shape the cuffs from larger sections of Royalite. This produced an extremely stiff boot suitable only for the most powerful racers. Attempting to solve the problem, they struck on the solution of molding the boot in two separate parts and joining them through rivets on either side, at the level of the ankle. This allowed the boot to retain all the lateral stiffness of the original design, while allowing the forward flex to be better controlled.
The new design, in blue and white, was released in limited numbers in 1962. Several people tried them out and reported a number of minor design issues, especially the problems lacing them up which often required two people. Levered buckles were an obvious solution, first invented by Hans Martin and introduced to the market in 1955 on the Henke Speedfit. However, Henke held the patent on the concept and Lange was reluctant to pay for a license.
By the winter of 1963 they had managed to fill only a small number of their orders and even smaller number were in use. These few boots suffered a number of mechanical failures that were traced to the poor performance of ABS plastic in low temperatures.
Adiprene
In late 1962 DuPont provided a solution, a new pourable polyurethane plastic known as Adiprene. This material was much less affected by the cold, but had the distinct disadvantage that it could not be vacuum-molded, as it needed to be used in liquid form. Instead, it had to be heated and poured into a mold and then allowed to cool and set. This made it much more time consuming to use in production, but the advantages were too great to ignore. The company spent most of 1963 trying to solve the production problems, ignoring the growing list of orders for the older ABS models.
In the end, no production of the new design was undertaken that year, leading to friction with his sales partners. In 1965 Lange finally added Henke-like buckles to his boots when that company gave up the patent. Not only did the buckle make it easy to close even the stiffest boots, the plastic spread the load across the entire cuff, applying even pressure to the foot. Leather designs tended to distort where the buckles attached, leading to tight spots on the foot and eventually damaging the leather.
It was not until 1965 they had built a new molding machine known as "Mickey Mouse" that could inject the Adiprene to speed production. This system was only marginally functional, and only 600 pairs of boots were produced that year. It was not until early 1966 that full production was able to start and 1,000 pairs had been completed. By the end of the year the number stood at 6,000, doubling in 1967 to 12,000, and again in 1968 to 25,000.
By this time, Rosemount Engineering had introduced their own all-synthetic boot. Unlike the Lange, the Rosemount design was made of rigid fiberglass and split open in two parts to put it on. Like Lange, they were only able to produce small numbers of boots, about 900 pair, for the 1965/66 season.Paul Stewart, , Sports Illustrated, 15 November 1965 Many sources make the claim that Rosemount was first to introduce a plastic boot commercially, but it appears that both were available in limited numbers at the same time. In any event, Lange's earlier Royalite models clearly pre-date any of the Rosemount examples.
Commercial success
Production was not the only issue; the new design also needed a test market to popularize it. Lange approached the United States ski team hoping to have them test the new design. However, they were being supplied by Heirling, and weren't interested.