Earl A. Miller was born in Manti, Utah in 1925 and was founder and president of the Miller Ski Company. He was an inventor and entrepreneur… and held more that 70 patents and trademarks. In order to promote his Miller Safety Binding in the mid to late 1950s, he would hold an annual event in the springtime at Alta where he would offer a $500 reward for anyone taking the same spills as he would do (on non-Miller ski equipment) and not get injured. He would then add a caveat, “Bring your own crutches!” This event was usually held on the mine dump at the base of the old Collins Lift. Earl was the first person to classify ski falls and relate them to specific bones broken, and he developed a tension-meter to measure pressures needed to break bones. His most significant inventions were the ski brake, the Twin Cam, the Double Roller, the platform ski pole grip, and the Miller Soft, a wide ski some felt was the best powder board of its time.
Miller was also a fully certified ski instructor and taught skiing in the Alf Engen Ski School and Deseret News Ski School at Alta in the 1950s. He also directed the ski school at Timp Haven (now Sundance Resort) in Provo and was one of the persons instrumental in the development of the Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) organization in the early 1960s.
Earl A. Miller was elected to the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame in 1994. This was followed two years later by being a recipient of the Utah Ski Archives “Quinney Award” for outstanding achievement and contribution to the region’s ski industry. He passed away on June 14, 2002 at age 77.