Bill Bowerman ruined his wife's waffle iron to make the first Nike sole

In 1971, Bill Bowerman, co-founder of Blue Ribbon Sports (soon to be Nike) and track coach at the University of Oregon, was looking for a way to make running shoes lighter and more grippy on artificial surfaces. Oregon's Hayward Field had recently installed an artificial track, and traditional spiked shoes were no longer ideal. Bowerman wanted a sole that could grip the new surface without spikes.

One morning over breakfast, Bowerman was discussing the problem with his wife, Barbara. He looked at the waffle iron on the counter and had an idea: what if the grid pattern of a waffle could give a shoe sole traction? He poured liquid urethane rubber into the heated waffle iron. The experiment produced a rubber sole with a perfect grid pattern — lightweight, flexible, and grippy. The waffle iron was destroyed in the process. Barbara was not pleased.

Bowerman refined the design and used it in the 'Moon Shoe,' a hand-made prototype that debuted at the 1972 US Olympic Track & Field Trials. The sole's pattern resembled the footprints left by Apollo astronauts on the lunar surface, giving the shoe its name. In 1974, Nike released the Waffle Trainer, a production version of the design, which became one of the company's first major successes.

The waffle sole established Nike's reputation for innovation in footwear technology. It was the first of many sole innovations that would define the brand, and it came from a kitchen appliance that Bowerman had no business using for manufacturing. The company that began as a distributor of Japanese running shoes became a global athletic footwear giant, in part because of a failed breakfast.