A huge turning point in the evolution of archery is the compound bow. It was created in the 1960’s by Howless Allen, an engineer. He was inspired by the creation of another bow, the Hoyt Medalist Bow. It was of the first models to incorporate the vertical stabilizer. The wheel was something that Allen had decided to put on to it. With the basic idea of the block and tackle pulley, it would increase ten fold the boys effectiveness. He thought that because of the system he was using, that is would naturally make room for more weight to be drawn on it. After some experimentation, Allen noted that the best results regarding weight-resistance were achieved with round pulleys and cam-shaped wheels. The middle of the draw is where the weight reaches its breaking point. Any point after that, the shooters draw is reduced an incredible amount. This idea makes it so that even a small shooter can lift a good amount of weight.
The compound bow didn’t get manufactured until several years after its creation. This was due to the fact that in America, the law made it so that no one could manufacture any devices that were attached to bows. At the time it was against the law to use them for any sort of competition or in hunting. Steadfast in his belief that the laws would soon be reversed in favor of his revolutionary invention, he kept making them. But somewhere along the line, Allen came to the realization that he had made a mistake. To his surprise, he was continuously stripping his arrows. The problem was that the cables that crossed in the center of the bow came were messing with the flight of the arrow. He figured out what he had to do in 1967 in order to fix his problem. All he did was apply a set of extra wheels which were mounted on each limb. On the tip of the limb, each were pointed to ninety degrees, which made it so that the cables didn’t mess with the flight of the arrow at all. Allen also put on adjuster that were basically just risers that were mounted so that it would allow different cable lengths to be used by archers.
Finally, Allen had achieved success in his compound bow and it was the dominantly used bow. Because of all of Allen’s adjustments, including the flatness and quickness of the arrow trajectory, heavier arrows used in hunting could be much more deadly and accurate, more so than ever. However the light weight ones could indeed travel longer distances, similar to the recurve bow.
Because of a publication from a famous fan, Tom Jennings, the compound bow has made its way into archery competitions and hunting seasons across the world and has become widely accepted in the archery community.