Early in the 19th century, Abel Rossignol, a skiing enthusiast and craftsman, was the head of a wood turnery in Voiron, a town just northeast of Grenoble. The turnery, founded in 1901, was producing wooden articles for the textile industry. In 1907 Abel decided to introduce his own pair of downhill skis, which were made of solid wood protected with a light-colored varnish. No ordinary skis, they were awarded first prize at a contest sponsored by the Touring Club of France, and in 1911, bolstered by his success, Rossignol established a new "skis and sleds" division of his company. Rossignol would continue to make solid-wood skis for the next three decades, and production would reach several hundred per year.
In the 1930s France emerged as a skiing power, led by Emile Allais. At the 1936 Winter Olympics held at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Allais won the bronze medal in the alpine combined, and the following year, at the world championships, he won the gold medal in all three alpine events, earning the title "champion of the world." All his medals were won on Rossignol skis. During this time Allais was also codifying his own method of ski instruction, published in the book Ski Frans.
In 1936 Rossignol hired Allais as its technical adviser and official tester, a position Allais used to help the company design some of the world's most advanced skis. The primary weakness of the company's skis was their solid-wood construction. Unless the wood had a uniform grain, for example, the ski would tend to warp during production, and even good solid wood skis would begin to lose their shape with age. Some of Rossignol's competitors had already found a solution--a laminated, or layered, construction similar to plywood, with wood grains running in different directions--which made a lighter, more durable wooden ski. By using different types of wood and various patterns of lamination, manufacturers could also choose the ski's specific flexibility and resilience. Although Rossignol was not the originator of this idea, the company's first laminated ski, the Olympic 41, was an advance in design. Developed in 1941, the ski found great success after World War II, carrying such racers as Henri Oreiller (1948) and Ottmar Schneider (1952) to Olympic victories. The ski's success was also seen at Rossignol's Voiron factory, where production would jump to several thousand by 1951.
More information at: View the Rossignol Skiing History Wiki page for more information.
