We all know Tommie Edison’s name. Alexander Graham Bell is pretty widely known, although less so since they took his name off the phone company. Everybody in the internet age knows who Nikola Tesla was, although most couldn’t tell you what he is really notable for. There are lots of guys who remain household names many decades after they shuffled off this mortal coil, because their name is still on the company masthead. A guy named Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber. John Deere made plows, and his company still does, 125+ years after his death. Samuel Morse won’t be forgotten soon, because the code he invented is still in use. But what about George Hackenschmidt? Have you guys forgotten about him?

Of course you haven’t, because you can’t forget what you never knew. Admit it, you’ve never heard of George. But as far as inventing things in common use, he’s right up there with Frank Bunker Gilbreth. Because Hackenschmidt invented the bench press exercise.

Pretty much everyone knows what a bench press is. Pretty much no one knows where it came from.

George was an Estonian (Russian Empire) wrestler born in 1878, back when (warning: spoiler) wrestling wasn’t entirely fake. Wrestling was considered a primo sport, with traditions going back to the original Olympics. George was always into physical fitness, but his first competitive sport was cycling, of all things. He was a blacksmith’s apprentice that raced for prizes on his days off. Then one day, a wrestler and strongman named Georg Lurich came to town with a kind of circus, and challenged any and all local comers to beat him. Hackenschmidt tried it, and lost, but liked the idea. He went into training in St. Petersburg, and eventually became a wrestler and strongman like Lurich. He won lots of formal weightlifting and wrestling competitions. Sometimes he’d wrestle five opponents during one evening, and beat them all.

Hackenschmidt might be obscure now, but he was a worldwide phenomenon in his day. He once wrestled at Comiskey Park, in front of 30,000 spectators for a gate of $87,000. That’s nearly three million in today’s money. He lost, by the way.

Hackenschmidt was was considered quite handsome, and was something of a clothes horse. He wasn’t a dullard either. He was educated and sophisticated, and was reported to speak seven languages. Teddy Roosevelt once remarked that “If I wasn’t president of the United States, I would like to be George Hackenschmidt.”

I just find it funny that George Hackenschmidt invented the bench press. I mean someone had to invent it, I guess. Someone invented the wheel, for instance, but we don’t know his name. Maybe if his name wasn’t Hackenschmidt, lying on your back and lifting a barbell off your chest over and over would be named after him, and he’d be a household word, like kleenex or something. But it was not to be. “Lie down and give me 20 hackenschmidts” just doesn’t roll off the tongue. Life isn’t fair sometimes.