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– Javier Pérez Pont

The apparatus popularly known as the “Cadillac”, more or less as it is known to us today, is the end result of other inventions that Joe Pilates made earlier. This appellation, it seems and may be just another myth, was due to a comment from a customer upon seeing this apparatus for the first time in the Original Studio. Its original name will remain between one of these two names used by Joe to designate this apparatus: “The Table” or “Massage-Table and Bed”.

In reality it was not born, like other devices, with a shape similar to the final result over the years. I would rather say that this device was born out of necessity: on the one hand to save space, to summarize similar ideas manifested in different devices (Reformer, Mat, Beds, Chairs and others), and as a logical and natural consequence of the genius of Joe Pilates in summarizing what are the main characteristics in each of his inventions, namely: apparent simplicity, independent in themselves, economical and practical. It must be said that there is a certain analogy of these characteristics with his own personality.

We must start from historical knowledge to understand how this device was “created”.

It was already eliminated, not by Joe Pilates and by Romana herself among others, the falsely spread and universally accepted idea that Cadillac was born in Great Britain when he worked as a nurse in the Detention Camps during the Great War.

With the publication almost 3 years ago of “Hubertus Joseph Pilates. The Biography”, it is demonstrated that the previous idea was totally untrue. I provided several reasons to highlight such as the impossibility of obtaining springs of any caliber inside the Detention Camps, that the beds in the Camps did not have headboards, not to say that they were only mattresses on the floor that in the mornings were rolled up to clear the rooms. In the hospitals of the Detention Camps, mattresses were only raised for the chronically ill who needed insulation from the temperature of the floor. And of course they did not have headboards. Without wanting to go into detail on other facts corroborated in the Biography on this issue, as it is completely in doubt that é worked as a nurse, let’s go on to detail the actual history of this unique device (remember as an example that his patent of the Universal Reformer in 1924, the use of springs is suggested but not yet used).

There is a historical evolution of Joe’s genius, which has produced several models of beds until finally remaining, without eliminating the previous ones, with the most complete version which is the Cadillac, which will come to summarize two decades of experimentation.

The primary idea that survives all inventions before the Cadillac appeared, and survives in this one, is that of exercising on a bed: always with the idea of what a bed was for Joe Pilates (read his 1934 book, his patents on the subject, drawings, pamphlets and films).

We will leave aside all the rest and recreational uses proposed in these first patents, photographs and films, to focus on the proposal that also serves as a gymnastic apparatus. In reality and in short, the “Bed” for Joe is an elevated mattress where, in addition to resting, one can exercise on it.

The second original idea is to perform exercises on it without the use of any type of resistance or weight, let’s say your Mat exercises.

Up to this point, he has not really created anything really special apart from the genius of uniting ergonomic rest and exercise in the same space. This in itself, the two concepts, separately and together as well, and his description of them, was revolutionary at the time (late 1920s and 1930s) and still is today.

His idea was simple, economical and practical at the same time. Qualities of his inventions that are always repeated as I have advanced above. And with it he tried to revolutionize the bed furniture, without much success as he himself explains in his book mentioned above. And he will never give up trying, another great personal quality of the master.

The result of these two original concepts is “Bed or Cauch”, with patent application on June 20, 1930 (approved on September 13, 1932). And not only in his new country, but proud of it, he applies for a patent in the middle of the following year in several countries: Germany, France and Great Britain. Around the same period when he patents this invention, he films himself on the terrace of a building giving us a demonstration of the wonders that can be done on it, and we can even find photographs, also in the same period, with a small adjustable awning and calling it differently than in the patent, “Pilates V-Sun Bed Couch’. We already have in total two versions of the invention.

During the next few years, he will not only have one in his own home, but we also find it in his second Studio or the so-called “Special Room” to exercise clients with special problems. He already advertises it and talks to certain companies for its industrial promotion, without success as will be proven over the years.

From the moment of the creation of this gymnastic bed-apparatus, improvements and extensions of the idea of the same one will be produced, which will lead to another patent request for another exercise bed on April 19, 1948. But we will return to this moment later since there will be great changes in these years between a patent and the following one of the bed, let’s say between 1930 and 1948.

And what do these changes consist of? Joe understands that the use of resistance is one of the great fundamentals on which he bases his exercise method. And so he made it clear as early as 1924 with the German patent for the Reformer, and even earlier, in 1922 with his first patented invention, the Footcorrector.

The springs are fundamental for the application of his philosophy of exercise and these provide several fundamental aspects such as the universality of his method, that is to say that previously this invention of the bed could not be used by people unable to work their body in a free way, the independence of the user with respect to the teacher and vice versa, since the latter should not perform the role played by the springs, and very important, the user with the help of these resistances will try to discipline, control and develop their physical development by themselves. This does not only imply muscular strengthening but also the use of the mind in the control of the springs.

It is not really new, it only applies to the invention created what it was already doing in other devices, read Reformer, Chair, Footcorrector and possibly, to other devices already invented at the time without any date of invention or patent.

To do so, it adds a headboard to the bed and to this headboard it adjusts springs, straps, spring bars and pulleys to extend its functionality.

There was no single model, nor did he coin a single name for these inventions or improvements. Thus, for lack of dates in many photographs, we also find several models of adjustments of the same as for example a bed with headboard up and down and the like. And different names almost to each of them. Hence there are several versions of beds with different headboards, some convertible in V (which could be folded in two), and others with fixed mattress, for example.

Thus in 1944 he speaks of “Rehabilitation exercises on massage table”, and in the film where Romana Kryzanowska appears he calls it “Romana on massage table”.

We arrive at 1948 where he requests another bed, which is basically the same as the first one but preferably made of metal and including an adjustable headboard, with the idea of attaching springs or other devices to this headboard, as we have already mentioned that he was doing well before this date. Now he calls it “Double Frame Bed” and the patent was approved on October 9, 1951. This bed is made of aluminum and polished chrome, it is very transportable because it weighs only 22 kg.

As I relate in The Biography, Joe made a film with this device in 1948, with the intention of being advertised on television. I doubt very much that this was ever shown on the small screen, but it clears up some clouds about his intentions and personality.

To summarize the above, from even before the first patent until well into the sixties, we have read how different names have been used to refer to both the first and the second patent. This will depend on the period in which we are, of small variations in the invention, modifications of the same, adjustments or simply marketing. Thus, in 1947 he speaks of the “Vbed”; in 1948 he baptizes it as “Vbed. Bed exercises”….

Four years after the second patent, in 1952, Joe tries to market it and even prints pamphlets advertising it under the name “The Automatic Posture Pilates Bed”. José Ferrer, the great and famous actor, already has one in his dressing room at the theater as well as many other actors and clients.

Around that time, and it is almost impossible to date it, there is a film where a young woman exercises in the “Bednasium” (one of the names that I guess Joe liked the most), with a child. At the end of it, the boy also exercises on another bed adapted to his measurements, trying to show that it adapts to all ages.

I, erroneously, state in The Biography that the definitive version of the Cadillac does not arrive until the late 1950s or early 1960s. There are photographs dated October 8, 1951 where this device appears in its more or less definitive version. So we could risk that this definitive version of the Cadillac would appear at least at the end of the decade of the forties.

All attempts to commercialize the equipment invented by Joe Pilates from the 1950s onwards met the criteria that Joe wanted to make his apparatus and method universal: inexpensive, light, and that would take up a minimum of space in the home (Wunda Chair or Chair, this bed, and a home Reformer).

Possibly dated 1955, there is an article advertising the “Bednasium” and another article dated 1952-1955 with the slogan “Novel Bednasium corrects posture”.

In 1959 he tells us about the “Rehabilitation of V Bed + Bath Tub”, also with his experiences in the bathtub. Very interesting.

On March 17, 1959, Joe receives a reply to his letter to Dorothy Pascal, for the purpose of promoting his “V-shaped bed”.

In June 1959, The People Magazine published an article with a photographic series about the benefits of the so-called “Pilates Relaxor Bed”.

In short, the “Cadillac” is today the residue of what was left of all his beds, perhaps not the best, but possibly the most complete of all the beds he invented, without detracting from the others that were undoubtedly very useful and it would have been wonderful to have the complete collection.

The “Cadillac” as such, was never patented as a device, however, other beds were. I dare to say that the reasons for this could be said to be a late creation, where we find a tired and older Joe Pilates, and as he himself points out, with thousands and thousands of dollars spent in protecting his inventions for a commercial result almost null.

Think also of his great hopes in the 1940s to commercialize certain devices with the help of his brother Clemens Friedrich, Fred, in Saint Louis, and with the Atlas Equipment company, which also, as far as we know, had no impact.

And what can we say about these original Cadillacs that Joe used? The first thing is that they were made of wood and tubes, and with a lot of accessories that were adjusted, added, modified and many of these have disappeared today.

My personal opinion, and I dare to say it, is that it is one more addition to the “toy house” (as Clara sometimes called the studio, referring to all the equipment in it) that is a Pilates studio. A complement to that ingenious, irreplaceable Universal Reformer.

Author Javier Pérez Pont

March 2016, Barcelona