Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Longest usable yo-yo: James Buffington sets world record (HD Video)

CHICAGO, IL, USA -- The founder of the Chicago Yo-Yo Club, James Buffington, had constructed and successfully demonstrated a yo-yo with a 39 feet, 9 3/16 inches string - setting the new world record for the Longest usable yo-yo .

  Photo: James Buffington breaks a Guinness world record on the roof of Cat & Mouse Game Store. Photo courtesy of James Buffington ( enlarge photo )

  The Guinness world record for the longest usable yo-yo was 10.72 m (35 ft 2 in) and was constructed and successfully demonstrated by Otis Miller (USA) at Jones Park, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA.

 Guinness World Records also recognized the largest yo-yo: 3.51 m (11 ft 6 in) in diameter with a weight of 738.64 kg (1,625 lb), devised by Jerry Havill's Team Problem Solving course (USA).

 "I was very relieved" after breaking the record, he said. "The weather forecast was showing thunderstorms for the entire day, but I lucked out and there was a good-sized window of no storm activity. There was more wind than I would have preferred, but I was able compensate for that nicely."

  James Buffington gathered his club members and a group of witnesses, photographers, a videographer and an architect at Bucktown's Cat & Mouse Game Store (2212 W. Armitage Ave.), the club's home base, for the attempt.

  He set the new record of 39 feet, 9 3/16 inches.

  They needed an architect to certify the measurements, so Buffington and Schmidt recruited Alec Lisec from Lisec & Biederman Architects to come with his laser distance-measurer.

  "We also need to have some witnesses on hand who are experts in the field of the record that's being broken," Schmidt explained, so they invited Mary Couzin, a toy-industry insider and the founder of the annual Chicago Toy and Game Fair.