Forget the old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If the great innovators of the world thought that way, we’d still be reading by kerosene lamps, writing with quill pens and sleeping on beds stuffed with straw.
Here at Therm-a-Rest, we are constantly tinkering with, riffing on and testing out both new and old concepts in a never-ending pursuit to create the world’s best camping gear. We’ll be the first to tell you—it doesn’t always work out. Sometimes we resort back to the old-school technology we developed back in the good ol’ 1970’s. But once in a while, the hard work pays off and we create a product we feel is truly revolutionary. That’s why we’re bursting at the seams to tell you about the SpeedValve—a technology that improves the way you inflate and deflate your camping mattress.
The idea for the SpeedValve came from a pool toy, to be honest. At the 2008 Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City, a few of our product developers marveled at the “Instaflator”—a product that used simple physics to inflate pool toys in a flash. That’s when the light bulb went off.
Turns out, the simple physics used by the Instaflator dates back to the mid 1700’s and was first “explained” by the Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli—hence the name Bernoulli Principle. And we’re pretty stoked to report that the same 300+ year-old concept not only inflates pool toys quickly, but it will also change the way you camp.
But we explain all of this and more at Thermarest-SpeedValve.com—a new site dedicated to showing off our line of SpeedValve mattresses. This mattress, equipped with the SpeedValve, is going to blow you away.
If you already have a SpeedValve mattress, checkout our tips video to become a SpeedValve pro.
See you out there!
Originally Published April 19th, 2016.
