ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,251,603, issued on March 18.
"Bar tapping tool" was invented by James Parent (Mount Pleasant, Mich.), Brett Wargo (Bonney Lake, Wash.) and Carrie Spender (Vancouver, Wash.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A bar tapping tool for use during a tap swing drill includes a plurality of bristles adjacent one another and extending horizontally so as to signal when the gymnast should begin her bodily shape change while keeping a safe distance from lower bar. The bar tapping tool has bristles of different lengths extending horizontally so that an athlete swinging on the upper bar can at first swing at a farther distance away from the lower bar and ...