Thirteen years before Barlia's amazing jump , Henry Ven Asch and A.J. Haskett invented the special rubber rope that made bungee jumping possible.
In 1998 the two men started the world's first bungee jumping business in the small New Zealand town of Queenstown .
Some of the locals didn't think the ne business would last very long .
But they were wrong .
Soonthousands of visitors were coming to Queenstown and paying to bungee jump off the KawarauBridge , 43 metres above the river below .
The bugee jumping craze had begun.