Origins

• In 1958, the Ford Foundation established the Educational Facilities Laboratories to conduct research on how to improve the quality of public parks inner-city youths. Its initial findings revealed that the grass at schools and parks continuously deteriorated under the feet of children and turned to a nearly unusable mix of dirt, gravel and mud. Its 1961 report followed with a call to chemists to invent an artificial surface that had the look and feel of natural grass.
  
  

Invention

• The Monsanto Company formed a division called Chemstrand to create a synthetic fiber that looked and felt like grass, could survive any type of weather, and could withstand constant foot traffic. A bevy of samples, plus more than two years of rigorous testing, resulted in the creation of the first artificial turf, then known as ChemGrass, in 1964. Invention of the material is officially credited to Monsanto employees Donald L. Elbert, James M. Faria and Robert T. Wright.
  
  

Installation in Facilities

• The first stadium to install ChemGrass was at Moses Brown Prep School in Providence, Rhode Island. Tal Smith--then special assistant to Judge Roy Hofheinz, mastermind behind the Houston Astrodome, the world's first domed stadium--visited the school on a tip from a friend. Smith fell in love with the ChemGrass, and the artificial turf was installed in the Astrodome, where natural grass failed when it opened in 1965. The high-profile integration of the turf into Houston's domed stadium earned the surface the new name "AstroTurf."
  
  

Widespread Popularity

• Ebert, Faria and Wright officially patented AstroTurf in 1967. That same year, Memorial Stadium at Indiana State University installed AstroTurf. The first AstroTurf manufacturing plant opened in Dalton, Georgia, the following year. AstroTurf first made its way into the NFL with the Houston Oilers, who shared the Astrodome with the Astros, and by 1974 was used in the Super Bowl. In 1984, engineers answered growing concerns of injuries to athletes and "turf toe" by installing the first drainage system at Trenton State University in Trenton, New Jersey. In 1996, the Summer Olympic Games became the first to use AstroTurf.
  
  

Significance

• AstroTurf is a trademarked brand, currently owned by Textile Management Associates and marketed as AstroTurf LLC. It is the leading provider of artificial turf for athletic facilities, having nearly monopolized the market for such products. It continues to evolve and improve its product to this day, most recently having announced a partnership with Reebok to improve interaction between footwear and turf in 2008. That same year, AstroTurf was selected as the official provider of artificial turf for American communities.