I’ve always been curious about this particular record, but all the internet searches I’ve tried in the past never turned up anything new. Then in January of this year, I noticed an online ad for newspapers.com. Their website has the largest searchable archive of newspaper scans, going back hundreds of years. Figured it was worth a shot, so I signed up for a free trial. 

I keyed in ‘University of Washington domino world record’ and searched across Washington state newspapers published during 1975. I was surprised when a few items came back, one of which listed the students’ names. However, the 3 articles were short and had little information beyond those names and the location of the topple. Then an idea popped into my head.  

I emailed that 1975 article listing the 6 names to the University of Washington alumni association and explained my quest to make contact with these former world record holders. I got a reply 3 weeks later saying they had forwarded my email to a few of the students. Then on March 3rd, I got an email from Roger Pomeroy, who confirmed he was the organizer of the team which set that world record. We eventually talked on the phone, and Roger told me the whole story about their record and it was nothing like I had imagined.

Roger Pomeroy and his 5 friends set that 1975 record on June 6, only 17 days after Bob Speca made his first appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on May 20. The common assumption is that they saw Speca topple his chain of 7,000 dominoes on the Tonight Show and immediately were inspired to break Bob’s record. Roger said he did watch that episode of the Tonight Show and it sort of was the catalyst for doing their record, but not in the way you would think. Roger went on to explain that their domino story actually began a year earlier.

At the start of 1974, Roger and his friends John Vimont, Patrick Jankanish, and Brian Takami were winding down their senior year at Fife High School in Washington. Inspired by their physics class teacher, the 4 began having discussions about dominoes in May of that year. They imagined what it would take to topple an incredibly long row of dominoes, which led to questions about where could they get the dominoes and where could they set them up. 

It’s interesting to note that while Roger, John, Patrick, and Brian were figuring out how they could do something big with dominoes on the west coast, they had no idea that Pennsylvania high school student Bob Speca was wowing his friends with large domino displays in his basement on the east coast, 7 months before he would set the very first domino toppling world record in December of 1974. Talk about your parallel universes.    

Now this domino idea kind of became an obsession for Roger and his friends, but purchasing many thousands of dominoes was out of the question. So, Roger took a different approach by writing letters to the Milton Bradley company, asking if they would donate 20,000 dominoes to help bring their physics experiment to life. Roger even offered to give all the dominoes to charity afterward, hoping that might sway the company’s decision. 

Roger mailed letters to 4 people at Milton Bradley, including the CEO and the head of marketing. It wasn’t until Roger and his friends started their freshman year at the University of Washington that a couple of replies finally came back. Unfortunately, both letters declined their request. The dream seemed to be dead.

So, how did Speca’s Tonight Show appearance over 7 months later end up being the catalyst for Roger and his friends’ world record attempt? Well, what happened after Roger watched that episode of Carson is the perfect example of the Tonight Show’s influence during that era. 

Throughout the 1970’s, Johnny Carson was the undisputed king of late-night TV as well as gatekeeper of the cultural zeitgeist for the country. If you made it on the Carson show, you were cool and everyone talked about you. The show’s average nightly audience was 9 million viewers, so Bob Speca and his dominoes instantly were known throughout the United States the day after his May 20th appearance. That fact was going to impact Roger’s life very quickly. 

On May 21st, Roger got a call from a lady at the firm handling publicity for Milton Bradley. Apparently, word of Roger’s letters made its way to them. She asked if he saw that domino guy on the Tonight Show last night, to which Roger said “Yes, of course I saw that”. Then she told him Milton Bradley would be sending him 20,000 dominoes within the next week. Because they moved so quickly, it meant that this publicity firm understood if dominoes were toppled on the Carson show, the country would be buzzing about it and the time to capitalize on that was right now. Roger couldn’t believe what he heard. The dream that was dead suddenly came back to life and now he had to put this topple together before the school year came to an end. 

Roger immediately told John, Patrick, and Brian the great news and the 4 of them recruited college friends Paul Birkeland and Chris Weatherill to the team. The next week, boxes and boxes of dominoes arrived, but there was a bit of a surprise. Instead of sending first quality dominoes boxed for retail sale, Milton Bradley sent unpackaged factory reject dominoes that had smeared paint on the dots or broken edges. The team had to sort through the loose dominoes to find the ones with smooth edges that were good for toppling. In the end, they discarded almost 25% of the dominoes, leaving them with 15,000 good ones, enough to get the world record. 

With the manpower and materials set, the final piece was finding the right place to set up the dominoes and their search ultimately ended at an off-campus location. They chose the Seattle Center House, home of the Food Circus food court, which was on an upper-level wrap-around balcony that had a smooth floor, perfect for setting up dominoes.

The team arranged to start setting up late on the night of June 5th after the building closed. They pulled an all-nighter, working 10 hours to complete the set-up of 15.000 dominoes. Because of the limited time, the guys had to keep the set-up simple to get it done quickly. 

From the starting point, there was a single line that looped around the whole food court balcony a couple times and then the set-up finished off with a large outline of the United States. Roger told me they experimented with doing the iconic Seattle Space Needle, but scrapped that idea and went with the U.S. outline instead. 

On the morning of June 6, with friends and lots of curious spectators watching, the topple was ready to begin. This is the only known picture from that day, taken after the dominoes started falling. Despite the poor scan quality, you can make out a few things. Here, you can see where the chain had been started, with the line going to the left. Next to that, you can see another fallen row that comes all the way from the right of the picture and goes off camera to the left. That’s where the first loop around the balcony completed and started its 2nd time around, which is what the spectators are watching in this picture. Then there is a 3rd line still standing, which won’t fall until the 2^nd loop comes back from its trek around the balcony. 

After the loops finished, the outline of the U.S. started falling. When it got around to Washington state and the place where the capital Olympia was represented in dominoes, the chain unfortunately (and somewhat ironically) stopped, almost 1,200 dominoes from the end. It wasn’t a perfect topple, but with 13,832 fallen dominoes, the team had their world record!

Later that fall, the 1976 edition of the Guinness Book of World records came out and it contained the first entry for the new domino toppling category. Roger told me they were happy to see their record listed, but it was a big letdown that their names weren’t included. Of course it was a letdown! That’s a huge part of why people try to set world records. They want to see their name in the record setters’ bible. 

We can’t undo what’s been done, but now that this mystery has been solved and the world finally knows the story of the University of Washington world record team, it’s time to give them the recognition that is long overdue. So, with thanks to Roger Pomeroy for providing this great picture, here is that 1975 team, from left to right, Roger Pomeroy, John Vimont, Patrick Jankanish, Chris Weatherill, Brian Takami, and Paul Birkeland. You guys were domino toppling trailblazers and on behalf of today’s global domino community, congratulations on achieving your world record.

We knew turning that hope into reality required getting as much publicity as possible. Our plan was to mail press releases to various TV stations announcing our world record attempt, so back then, finding those addresses required looking them up in a phone book. 

For those younger than a certain age, let me explain. Every household used to have a local phone book with 2 sections. The ‘white pages’ listed residential phone numbers and addresses, and the ‘yellow pages’ listed phone numbers and addresses for businesses.

Finding addresses for the Chicago TV stations in our local phone book was easy enough, but Erez and I knew we had to get national coverage, so we had to use the only search-engine available in 1979: The Chicago Public Library’s massive collection of phone books for every major city in America.    

Erez spent a Saturday there going through the hundreds of phone books they had. The advertising slogan for the yellow pages was Let Your Fingers Do The Walking and that day Erez’s fingers walked through countless yellow pages as he wrote down addresses for the local ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliate TV stations in the biggest cities across all 50 states. Then we used that list to mail out over 200 press releases a month before the topple, followed by another 200 reminder letters a few weeks later.

Oh, and about that 1 wish. The Chicago Tribune always used to have a photo essay filling the back page of the sports section. It could be about any subject, but they always were interesting and became a must-see for all Tribune readers. Erez and I talked about how cool it would be to make the back page of the sports section. Though we had no control over that happening, we held onto that wish when we mailed our press release to the Chicago Tribune.  

When topple day finally arrived, EVERYBODY showed up. Local film crews came from all the Chicago TV stations, as well as national crews from NBC and CBS. There were reporters and photographers from both of Chicago’s major newspapers, various suburban newspapers, and even news wire services AP and UPI. 

News of our world record went all over the U.S. and around the globe, making it the 1979 equivalent of ‘going viral’. Erez and I couldn’t have been happier, but the story that aired that night on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite provided the perfect ending to the day. Here’s that story and watch for Mr. Cronkite’s reaction at the end.  

To get a smile and a chuckle out of the famously stoic Walter Cronkite as he gave his iconic sign-off was the cherry on top for Erez and me.

As for that 1 hope, it did become a reality the next day when we got a phone call that set us on the path to attempting another world record in 1980 as a fundraiser for the National Hemophilia Foundation.

And that wish? Well, 2 days later when we turned to the back page of the Chicago Tribune sports section, we saw it had been granted, adding some sprinkles to that Walter Cronkite cherry on top.

In fact, this picture, which appeared in newspapers, is the only known photo of the set-up that Klaus created.

This particular record actually is important because it was the catalyst for the Guinness Book making a significant rule change. This world record was not accepted by Guinness because the dominoes that Klaus used “were not true dominoes, but hollow plastic”. Up until then, all previous world records used traditional wooden dominoes, so Klaus was the first person to break that “rule” and Guinness wouldn’t accept his claim.

Despite initially rejecting his record, Klaus’s uncertified topple was noted in a short 3-line paragraph in the 1985 Guinness Book, but Englishman Michael Cairney still was listed as holding the solo record. However, by the time the 1986 edition was published, the folks at Guinness changed their ruling and certified Klaus’s topple of 281,581 hollow plastic dominoes as the new solo world record. So, thanks to Klaus and that rule change by Guinness, plastic dominoes eventually became the standard in the toppling world.

And we have some breaking news to share. While doing research about Klaus’s record, we happened to find a YouTube video of a German TV show called Wetton Dass from December 12th of 1981. It that video, Klaus toppled a chain of 22,222 dominoes, over 2 years before he did his world record. Now we finally know what Klaus looked like back when he was about 19 and if you watch this topple, you’ll see a bit of domino history. Klaus was the first person to create what is now known as a circle-bomb, where a single line falls into the middle of a large circle and then a wave of dominoes fans outward all around from the center.

So, let’s give Klaus Friedrich his due for inventing the circle-bomb, setting a solo record that stood for over 15 years, and getting the Guinness Book to accept plastic dominoes. Klaus, if you’re out there, we’d love to hear from you and maybe you’d like to join our Domino Dream Team and be part of another world record in the coming years.