You can own it now and it’s all thanks to an obscure Missouri innovator named Holless Wilbur Allen.
In the early 1960s, Allen was fiddling with the first compound bow, hoping to give the bows of the future a mechanical advantage over traditional bows. At first, Allen tried sawing the ends off the limbs of a recurve bow and attaching pulleys, which created a crude block-and-tackle system. This system didn't work well, however, as the bow then had a limited draw length due to the short limb-tip travel. After four years of tinkering and who knows how many design changes, Allen settled on a system of cams and eccentric wheels in place of the original pulley system. Allen filed for a patent in June 1966, and in December 1969 patent No. 3,486,495 was issued. Allen also approached several manufacturers about building and marketing his new bow but found no one willing to accept the challenge. So, he began marketing the Allen Compound Bow — his "Archery Bow with Force Multiplying Attachments" in 1967.
“All I was trying to develop was a bow that would get an arrow to a 10- to 25-yard target — a deer — before the target could move,” Allen said.
