#AirPump August 10

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August 2026 several of us are going to take on the 30-Day Plugged in Coach4aday Challenge. Each day, we will feature an item from home or office that requires being plugged into a source of electricity to operate. We will reflect on how it makes life easier. For Day 10 it is the AIR PUMP.

As a kid in the 60’s my two worldly possessions were a Spalding basketball and a bicycle. They both required air to be pumped in to make them functional. At our house we had something similar to the hand air pump shown below.

The basketball required a needle and the bike needed to have the valve screw on. You stood on the plates at the base of the pump and went up and down. Today having a device plug in makes that much easier.

Day 10-Air Pump

As a former basketball coach, I have certainly inflated my share of practice and game balls. When James Naismith created basketball in 1891, leather basketballs were inflated using hand pumps. Coaches, equipment managers, and gym teachers relied on manual pumps for decades.

From the early 1900s through the 1980s, nearly every school, recreation center, and sporting goods store used:

• Hand-operated piston pumps
• Foot pumps
• Small air compressors in equipment rooms

Portable hand pumps remained the standard because they were inexpensive, reliable, and easy to carry.

Electric Air Pumps

By the 1980s and 1990s, compact electric air compressors became common in homes and garages. Although designed primarily for automobile tires, they could also inflate basketballs and other sports equipment with the proper needle attachment.

Almost all that are used today are rechargeable that increases portability