25 Sneaker Innovations We're Thankful For

Image via Complex Original

Year Introduced: 1800s

Vulcanized rubber changed the world. That's not hyperbole - there's a lot more than Chuck Taylors that don't exist if Charles Goodyear doesn't figure out that heating rubber and adding sulfur changes an elastic material into a dynamic one. What's more is that the classic vulc sole, now over 100 years old, still has properties that a more modern cupsole doesn't. Ask a skater.

Year Introduced: 1979

Nike Air may seem like mundane, everyday stuff now, but in the '70s it must have been downright shocking. A NASA engineer developing cushioning for running shoes? A bit like killing a fly with a nuclear weapon. Perhaps, only Air (which isn't actually air, per se) caught on like wildfire and branched out in all sorts of directions. Heck, it's outlasted the space program.

Year Introduced: 1997

A molded sneaker? Inspired by a coin purse and developed by Daewoo, Foamposite introduced something entirely new to the sneaker world. The weight (and the cost) is still somewhat prohibitive, but the sneaker world would look far different without Foams.

Year Introduced: 2008

Up until relatively recently, adding support meant adding weight. Maybe it wasn't much weight - that of a few nylon straps - but after a while it still added up. One of Nike's innovations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Flywire, changed that. It enabled sneaker designers to utilize Vectran cables in place of straps, resulting in both weight savings and a whole new design element.

Year Introduced: 1989

Laces can only do so much - you can only tie a shoe so tightly. How do you make an upper fit like the proverbial glove? Reebok designer Paul Litchfield came up with the Pump, a mechanism on the tongue that allowed wearers to inflate the upper of their shoe, filling in all those gaps. Prohibitively expensive in 1989, it eventually trickled down to the masses.

Year Introduced: 1996

Your foot doesn't have right angles, why should your sneaker soles? The Feet You Wear concept wasn't invented by adidas, but it was licensed by them, and it resulted in a whole generation of softly rounded, more natural-feeling shoes. This wasn't "barefoot" style - they still made use of traditional foam midsoles - but it got the journey started.

Year Introduced: 2001

Nike's mechanical cushioning system nearly didn't make it. Shox was in its infancy in the late '70s at the same time a NASA engineer named Frank Rudy was working on a gas-based cushion. The latter would be introduced in 1979 as "Nike Air," and its immediate success pushed everything else into the background. But Shox didn't go away. Designed Bruce Kilgore simply kept refining, and by 2001 it emerged fully formed.

Year Introduced: N/A

Many companies have tried many traction patterns over the years, but it keeps coming back to basic herringbone. Simple and multidirectional, herringbone works as well on your outsoles as it does on your professor's sportscoat.

Year Introduced:

New Balance's proprietary mix of DuPont foam, ABZORB not only cushions some of the world's most iconic running shoes, it also is one of the best product names in the sneaker glossary. Remember all caps when you spell ABZORB name.

Year Introduced: 2008

Feet You Wear for a modern world, adiPure is adidas' answer to natural motion. It's been found in everything from soccer boots to basketball shoes to runners, even a toe-shoe trainer. This isn't something that's just going to go away, either.

Year Introduced: 2012

The Air Jordan XI was the first Air Jordan to utilize a carbon plate for both energy return and stability, but it wouldn't be the last. By 2012, the simple plate had evolved to a system called "Flight Plate," which both provided the necessary support and, as Nike put it, "unleash[ed] the power of the Zoom bags." Great name, too.

Year Introduced: 1997

What's better than air as a cushioning material? Moving air. Reebok's DMX system allowed air to flow through a series of pods on the outsole, delivering end-to-end cushioning as well as a form of energy return. It started in a running shoe - the DMX 10 - before making its way to basketball and reinventing the still-new Iverson line.

Year Introduced: 1972

It's a story that's been told over and over again - how Bill Bowerman sacrifices his wife's waffle iron to make a rubber outsole that would mimic the feel of a classic track spike. Of all of Nike's early innovaions, this one helped them gain the most, well, traction.

Year Introduced: 1990

Honeycomb - one of the strongest and lightest shapes in nature - served as the inspiration for Hexalite, a Reebok cushioning material that debuted in Michael Chang's Court Victory Pump before spreading throughout all disciplines. According to Reebok it was four times more durable than EVA foam and absorbed 23 percent more energy. Plus, it looks cool.

Year Introduced: N/A

Ethylene-vinyl acetate is the classic foam rubber used as midsole cushioning. Without it, we're all still in Chuck Taylors and Jack Purcells (and knee braces, most likely).

Year Introduced: 2008

Once again, a NASA designer to Nike's rescue. Lunarlon, or Lunar foam, is a super-lightweight foam with excellent cushioning properties that replaced both classic EVA foam and even Air in certain midsoles. Like Air, Lunarlon became a go-to material for both performance and lifestyle applications.

Year Introduced: 2004

It's kind of funny that, roughly 30 years after the invention of the "modern" running shoe, designers wanted to rip it all up and start again. But that's exactly what Nike Free aimed to do. The segmented outsole and midsole allowed the foot to work the way it wanted to rather than the way the sneaker did - which was revolutionary in its own right.

Year Introduced: N/A

Velcro as sole closure on a sneaker is more suitable to those who are eight (or 80), but Velcro as an accent, whether it be for looks or added support, has been a key element to so many classic designs. Football trainers (and Charles Barkley's signature line - not to mention Kanye's) wouldn't be the same without it.

Year Introduced: 1988

It's hard to pinpoint when the first designer put a shank in a sneaker, but adidas' Torsion design was the most elegant solution to flex in the wrong places. Utilizing a narrow I-beam design instead of a full-on plate, Torsion was lightweight and exactly what was needed to prevent bending and twisting.

Year Introduced: 1994

Just like Pump, only better. Reebok's Insta Pump system did away with the ball-shaped Pump mechanism, replacing it with a valve and a CO2 cartridge. The most famous Insta Pump shoe, the Insta Pump Fury, still looks futuristic nearly 20 years on.

Year Introduced: 1987

What started as a mere window in 1987 has grown to become an entire greenhouse. "Max Air" came about because the airbag was so large that it had nowhere else to go. Seeing that it's replaced the entire midsole in certain models, we appear to have reached, well, max Max.

Year Introduced: 1995

Known as "tensile Air" in its first incarnation, the lower-profile, more responsive airbag was later re-named "Zoom." Smart choice. Rather than just rely on air's cushioning properties, Zoom Air allows for a lower-to-the-ground feel and more immediate feedback. They could have called it "Min Air," but we're kind of glad they didn't.

Year Introduced: 2010

Back in the early days, there weren't many choices when it came to upper materials: There was canvas, there was leather, there was suede, there was nylon. That was pretty much it. Lightweight meant nylon, durable meant leather, breathable meant either open mesh or punching holes in leather and suede. "Hyperfuse," which utilized multiple layers of thin, synthetic material, took care of both properties. Leather and suede both still have their uses, but as far as pure performance goes, fuse is hard to beat.

Year Introduced: 1986

Onitsuka Tiger lost a lot in the early '70s when Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman - who had tinkered with their earlier running models - split from the company to form Nike. But in the mid-'80s, with the company then known as ASICS, they had an idea of their own. Gel may have been heavier than Air, but liquid was more predictable and had different cushioning properties. Twenty-five years of refinement has just made the original concept look better and better.

Year Introduced: N/A

Sometimes finding out definitive bits of sneaker history feels like trying to catch a butterfly with a lasso. We can't pinpoint the invention of the cupsole, but without it we're all still in vulc soles and plimsolls. Trust us, it's better this way.