Just for skaters

History

There is no definitive origin or inventor of the skateboard. One proposed origin is that skateboards arose in the 1930s and 1940s, when children would participate in soapbox races, using soap-boxes attached to wooden planks on rollerskate wheels. When the soap-box became detached from the plank, children would ride these primitive "skateboards". Another suggests that the skateboard was created directly from the adaptation of a single roller skate taken apart and nailed to a 2x4, without the soapbox at all and that it was often surfers looking to recreate the feel of surfing on the land when the surf was flat.

Retail skateboards were first marketed in 1958 by Bill and Mark Richard of Dana Point, California. They attached roller skate wheels from the Chicago Roller Skate Company to a plank of wood and sold them in their Val Surf Shops.^[1]

Five years later mass produced skateboards were sold nationally. These early models were often made in the shape of a surfboard, with no concavity and were constructed of solid wood, plastic, even metal. The wheels were usually made of a clay composite, or steel and the trucks (axles) were less sturdy and initially of a 'single-action' design compared to today's 'double-action'.