Sixty years ago today, a 48-year-old German World War I vet named Adolf Dassler formally registered a new athletic shoe company. The company's logo would be three diagonal stripes; the name, a combination of the founder's nickname and the first syllable of his last name. Adi. Das. Dassler wasn't new to this. He and his brother Rudi had been making footwear since 1924; they even laced Jesse Owens with shoes for the '36 Olympics (which, incidentally, must have driven that other Adolf crazy). In 1947, the brothers split up. Rudi went on to form another athletic shoe company. Called it Puma. As for adidas, well, read on.

Read more about adidas history after the jump.


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1950s

adidas kept supplying Olympic champions in their first decade, but if it wasn't for the "Miracle of Bern," maybe the rest of the story would've turned out different. Football (soccer, to us heathen Americans) was king in Germany, and nothing was more important than the World Cup. Facing heavily favored Hungary in the 1954 final, the German team turned to their secret weapon: Adi's new boots. Made from slimmed-down uppers and featuring the first-ever screw-in cleats, the lighter boots were thought to have made the difference, as the Hungarians struggled with the muddy field. After that, Adi could have asked to use the Brandenburg Gate in a shoe, and he would have gotten it. Delivered. Adi also developed some kind of a football trainer that year. Called it the Samba. Maybe you've heard of it?

1960s

Two of the things adidas WASN'T good for were A) the competition (not that there was much in the '60s), and B) kangaroos. Kangaroo leather was thin, tough, light and perfect for soccer boots (like the Chile, developed for the 1962 World Cup) and track spikes (like the ones Wilma Rudolph won on her way to three golds in the 1960 Olympics, or the ones that Bob Beamon wore to shatter the world long-jump record in 1968). Not that they stopped using "regular" leather. In 1963, Adi produced the first leather tennis shoe, named for Robert Haillet. Never heard of him? Maybe you're familiar with the guy they were re-named for: Stan Smith. And mesh wasn't dead, either. In the '60s Rod Laver was killing the game like a Federer x Sampras collabo, Grand Slamming in 1962 and 1968. Plenty of tennis players have earned $100k in a year since, but he did it first. As the decade came to a close, two more shoes hit that would make a little bit of an impact: a soft handball shoe called the Gazelle, and a leather basketball shoe -- the first ever -- with a rubber toecap called the Superstar. They also finally entered the U.S. market. Good timing.

1970s

If the '50s were just the start and the '60s were the time of innovation, then the '70s were nothing short of worldwide domination. Make a pair of boots for Muhammad Ali less than 24 hours before a major bout? No problem. Equip Franz Beckenbauer for the World Cup, Arthur Ashe for Wimbledon, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the NBA, Reinhold Messner for Mt. Everest (sans oxygen) and Eddy Merckx for the Tour de France, the Giro D'Italia and every other major bike race in the world? Psh. Don't you have something, you know, difficult? Firmly entrenched in the world of pro basketball, they dropped the Americana for the ABA, and the Top Ten for the (alleged) 10 best players in the NBA. But adidas wasn't just topping podiums and mountains. The Superstar hit just as hard on the streets of NYC as it did on the courts of the NBA. And an L.A. Times article from 1977 made note of a skateboarder's adidas. Adi Dassler himself died in 1978, dream fulfilled.

1980s

When Dr. Dees, a local Queens, N.Y., columnist, decried those guys out there in Lees, gold chains and adidas as most likely being felons, a group of three friends from Hollis responded in the best way they knew how: "My adidas and me close as can be / We make a mean team, my adidas and me / We get around together, we down forever / And we won't be mad when worn in bad weather" The group was Run-DMC, the song was "My adidas," the year was 1986, and things were about to get serious. Not that adidas had abandoned the performance side -- far from it. Athletes like Edwin Moses, Steffi Graf and Patrick Ewing kept winning on the courts and tracks. Well, OK, to a point. But adidas was having more crossover appeal. The Forum (named after the L.A. basketball arena), which dropped in 1984, was designed purely for athletes, but hit hard on the streets thanks to its bulky cut, velcro strap and $100 price tag, a first for basketball shoes. The Micropacer, another 1984 intro, was the first shoe to feature a computer. And the ZX series, while technically running shoes, was a series of bangers.


1990s

Remember "Feet You Wear?" You totally do, right? That goofy happy-faced foot logo, the whole concept of keeping the foot lower to the ground and letting it move more naturally. No? Well, you probably remember the guys who wore it: Kobe Bryant, Keyshawn Johnson, Tracy McGrady. The decade started with Equipment -- continuations on the bulky, overbuilt theme that started with the Top Ten in 1979 -- but ended with products that harkened back to the earliest days of adidas. Lighter, faster, stronger. And while Kobe Bryant's victory in the 1997 Slam Dunk Contest wasn't exactly the Miracle of Bern, it probably had more viewers. And we KNOW you saw Anna Kournikova. Over on the soccer field, you had the biggest names in the game wearing their chain in three stripes, namely David Beckham and Zinedine Zidane. If those names don't mean anything to you (ignorant American), they also signed a 10-year deal with the New York Yankees. (And extended it.)

2000s

Trying to sum up an adidas decade in a paragraph is like trying to put together an eight-song Beatles greatest hits. You just can't do it. Otherwise you just get a list, sorta like this: Dave Mirra and Ryan Nyquist on bikes; Mark Gonzales on skateboards; Yohji Yamamoto and Stella McCartney in stores; LeBron James in high school; Memphis and UCLA in college; Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan and Gilbert Arenas and Dwight Howard on NBA courts; B.J. Upton on the basepaths; Ryan Howard in the batter's box; Joba Chamberlain on the mound; Haile Gebrselassie on the marathon course; the "Teamgeist" ball flying unpredictably on soccer fields; Beckham and Zidane in pursuit; Jeremy Scott in the design studio; UNDRCWN collaborating; the adidas_1 thinking; ClimaCool breathing; FORMOTION™ reacting. The way to end something like this isn't with a catchphrase. Especially not a trademarked one. But sometimes you just don't have a choice. Impossible was nothing.

Happy birthday, adidas. And many more.