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The History of Surfboards
One thousand six hundred years ago, when Paris was still a mudhole, Christianity was just starting to catch on and the Mayan and Incan empires in The Americas were beginning to peak, Polynesians and Hawaiians were riding waves from pieces of tree trunks and each “board” measured about five meters long. The first surfboards were made of indigenous wood the locals called Wili Wili, Ula, and Koa, and the boards were ridden not only for sport and exercise, but also as a form of machismo, bravado, and competition.
OK, some things never change.
Fast forward to the Twentieth Century: Paris has the Eiffel Tower, berets, and French toast while surfing in the South Pacific has stayed basically the same. Then, in 1926, George Freeth cut his surfboard in half, moved to California and became the first professional surfer. In that same year, Tom Blake created the first hollow board, essentially boring hundreds of thin holes in his redwood board, then applying a thin veneer of hardwood, thereby cutting the weight down to “just” one hundred pounds. Hawaiian riders ridiculed him at first, christening his invention the “cigar board,” until they witnessed how fast it was. Blake began the first mass manufacturing of surfboards in 1930. He also created the first “fixed” fin in 1935. Three years prior to that, in 1932, balsa was being imported from South America to the U.S. and surfers were using the lighter wood as a core for their boards, with a veneer of redwood on the outside for durability. This cut the weight down again, this time to about thirty to forty pounds. And, in 1934, Wally Froiseth started shaving and molding the tails of his boards to give them more maneuverability with a technique dubbed the “hot curl.”
After World War II, fiberglass and Styrofoam, both developed by military scientists for the war, hit the surf scene in a big way. Pete Peterson was the first person to make fiberglass surfboards. His original model, in 1946, had a redwood “stringer” through its core. Joe Quigg and Bob Simmons were two surfers who began travelling up and down the California coastline in the early Fifties, selling their new foam boards. In 1953, Dale Velzy set up the first surf shop with his buddy Hap Jacobs. Hobie Alter lived in Ontario and Laguna Beach, California, setting up his shop in 1954 and revolutionized surfboard production, mass producing two hundred and fifty a week and making it affordable as a luxury item, a plaything. He also schooled a new generation of board shapers, including Dewey Weber, Mickey Munoz, and Corky Carrol.
Shortboards and twin fins became popular in the Sixties, specifically the designs of Dick Brewer, a pioneer in making boards shorter: he reduced the size from ten feet to just six. And with that, the race was on to create boards that were faster and more stable and maneuverable in the water, with innovations in rail shapes, tails, and bottom contour.
Experimentation became the new game, but very few new ideas have persevered. The aluminum board came and went as if it never existed at all. The newest idea out there that has caught my eye is a board with a valve to control the inner pressure of the board to coincide with outside temperature and barometric pressure. What will they think of next? Let’s wait and see!
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