History
Snowboarding is based on surfing and an artist's passion for the custom product. So it's a little hard to write a half decent history of this sport. The birth of snowboarding with the first commercial product. This was called the Snurfer, made by Shervin Popper in the second half of the 1960's. He was a surfer who wanted to provide a tool to allow surfers to continue the sport during the winter. It was wide, without any bindings, just like a surf board. Popper was a good promoter for his product, and he was able to sell about 100,000 Snurfers at $15.00 a piece.
The second snowboard pioneer was Dimitrije Milovich, a surfer on the east coast. He limited the production of custom boards with iron edges at the first half of the 1970's. In 1972, Bob Webber recieved a patent for his Skiboard, another board directly from the surf philosophy, without edges.
In 1975 Dimitrije Milovich developed the Winterstick, the historic brand so famous for the first video in powder. He started production of a swallowtail board for deep powder, often using iron edges as on his earlier boards. Petit Morey and Kendall, the two main insurance companies of American ski resorts, to cover liability for snowboarding. In 1977, the main snowboard factory of today started production: Jack Burton made and sold his prototypes, with handmade bindings, some elements are similar to today's design. Tom Sims also started production of some boards based on the Snurfer. In 1979 Tom Sims and Chuck Barfoot created the first board made of fiberglass. At the second part of the !980's snowboarding became a sport.
1985 was the first year for snowboarding races: there was the first Mt. Baker slalom, the first North American Snowboard Championship in Calgary. In 1985 more important change of direction in the design of boards, with greater use of iron edges for packed snow and different shapes for different uses: freeride and freestyle. This was the start of the modern snowboarding age.