In his own words...
In an interview at PIA Symposium, Ted was asked: "What drove you to create the tandem system?"
His answer, which contextually starts in the 1970's: "Experienced jumpers had taken their kids. A friend of mine took his wife. He was a small, short guy, experienced jumper, and he put her inside the same harness he had, same buckles and everything, but he couldn’t get her under the chest strap. So he cut the seatbelt out of the airplane and put it around .... put her inside and made a couple of jumps like that. It went a few years, and then one of the fellows who worked for me built a real small harness for his boy, and took his boy on a jump. I thought, you know, there’s got to be something to this. You know, you get dual instruction for cars and all these other things, why not for jumping? The initial thought—and it’s always been—was to use it as a method of instruction. Dual Controls. You can teach how to do things in freefall, have them pull the ripcord, have them steer. I was thinking of that and Bill Morrissey came down from New York. We went out for a beer and on a napkin he [showed me] 'this idea… two people…' And I said, 'You know Bill, I’ve been thinking the same thing!' About two months later I made that first tandem with the lady who built the parachutes [we used]... I wanted all the assurance I could get!”