Here is an interesting website by John Gill. He must have spent endless hours in the library...
http://www128.pair.com/r3d4k7/Bouldering_History1.0.htmlMy favorite quote:
"I learned to do a one-finger, one-arm pullup in 1959 because this same German climber told me Buhl could do one. But I was never able to verify this claim. However, I've recently learned from Kerwin Klein that in the South Tyrol - homeland for Buhl - there was an old drinking game called Fingerhackeln or Finger-fighting, with origins well back in the 19th century, in which contestants locked middle fingers across a table, then tried to pull each other across. According to one 1878 account "One very frequently sees, in Tyrol, men with fingers bent nearly double on the right hand". Can it be that this enviable muscle-trick, a threshhold some serious boulderers feel they must cross, derives from a drunken farmers' game?"
