Buy the books here:
Volume 1: (mostly) European Tools and Techniques to the 1930s
Volume 2: (mostly) North American Climbing Tools and Techniques to the 1950s
My first gear catalogs I typed up in 1987 are a good reference for gear researchers (including me) to recall all the state of the art gear of the mid-1980s. I started A5 Adventures, Inc. company making hammers, but I also set up wholesale accounts with every possible climbing gear manufacturer to offer via mail-order the best and most specialised tools for efficient big wall climbing. A few tricks were being learned. I post these here as they are not anywhere else. I just found these old copies buried in some storage box and scanned them just now (2022):
1987 A5 Adventures Catalog
Believe it or not, the above was all stored on a memory typewriter, which involved arcane methods to re-edit to update prices, etc, but once stored, I could automatically type out more. Soon later I invested several thousand dollars in a Apple Macintosh SE, my first computer and a huge amount of money in those days. John McMullen came on board and began creating great bigwall art, so I learned how to typeset using Apple programs, and we started to lay out new cool catalogs.
1988 A5 Adventures “Pre-Season” Pricelist:
Catalogs 1 and 2 (1990/1) and 1996 (our last year)
Several old A5 Catalogs can be seen on bigwalls.net at http://www.bigwalls.net/d4-design.html
Bigwalls.net vs. Bigwalls.com
Be sure to also visit bigwalls.com which are the top “How-to” videos (bigwalls.com used to direct to bigwalls.net, but as I never had any “commerical” on the .com domain, I only really need bigwalls.net, which still offers archival and design information, so I gave Ryan the bigwalls.com domain.
The ol' Flagstaff address... I'm of a different generation of climbers, getting to Flag in the mid- 2000s. One day Eric Meudt told me that A5 once made gear down the street so I did what any true nerd would do and went to that old address, now a vet clinic. There, still stuck in the cement sidewalk Infront of the building, is the mold of some old cam lobes (WireBliss??) and a carabineer, conjuring memories that weren't even mine. Thanks for sharing all this rad information.
This might be of interest:
https://www.blackdiamondequipment.com/en_US/stories/experience-story-gear-could-talk-piana/