Harken began in 1968 as Vanguard, a small company owned by brothers, Peter and Olaf Harken. They built collegiate sailing dinghies and equipped them with Peter's thermoplastic recirculating ball bearing pulleys to handle the sails. Vanguard soon grew into a prominent builder of Olympic class sailboats. Harken, as the hardware division, developed a line of ball bearing hardware that is used by a variety of industries.
Approaching problems as potential solutions led to Harken's expansion outside the sailing industry. The company has designed track and window-handling systems for NASA's Orbiter, pulleys for an archaeological dig, pulleys for Boeing Aircraft, pulleys and winches for Las Vegas shows, a winch system for a Mount Everest expedition, and an instrument installation system for jet fighters. A factory-built iceboat on wheels (equipped with Harken pulleys) even won the Land Sailing World Championships.
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