“History of Surfing” part 5
Enjoy our new
“HISTORY of SURFING” BLOG
and learn more about this amazing sport.
Part 5
Perhaps the greatest surf innovator next to Tom Blake is
Bob Simmons
also known as “the mad scientist” to his surf compadres in the ’40s and ’50s.
Born in Los Angeles in1919, as a teenager Simmons developed a large tumor on his left ankle and doctors wanted to amputate the leg to keep it from spreading. Luckily, Bob’s mother sought a second opinion and found a holistic chiropractor who put him on a strict diet to cleanse his system, and within six months the tumor disappeared. Simmons began riding a bicycle to strengthen his body after his battle with this health, and everything was going great until he had a collision with a car that made an unexpected u-turn. Simmons once again found himself at the mercy of doctors now with a fractured skull, a broken leg, and a smashed left elbow that had to be permanently wired straight.
While in the hospital, another patient recommended surfing to Bob as a form of rehabilitation for his battered arm.
No one knows who this surfer was, but his suggestion changed the course of surf history forever.
Although he was a high school dropout (due to his leg tumor), he was admitted to CalTech where he studied engineering and got straight A’s without ever bringing a book home. It is believed that Simmons was somewhat of a natural genius, especially in mathematics, and possessed a photographic memory.
Because of his arm injury, Simmons struggled with the weight of boards of his day, his mother often having to help him load it onto his car and then he’d drag it down the beach into the water.
As he became more and more obsessed with surfing, his engineer’s mind began to tinker with the possibilities of surfboard design. When WWII began, Simmons again dropped out of school and began to work as a machinist for Douglas Aircraft, where he was notorious for quitting whenever the surf came up and then getting his job back after the swell died.
After the War, Simmons studied the published writings on hydronamics of Lindsey Lord and began applying the science to the boards he was building himself. Simmons was the first to explore and develop bottom concaves and add rocker to his boards; before that, all boards were flat planks and could easily pearl. Simmons also experimented with different skegs, their placement and angles, settling usually on a wide tail that provided lift with small twin fins right on the rails. This twin-fin design would later be further developed by San Diegan Steve Lis in his development of the popular “fish” surfboard design.
Simmons was also the first to use foam and fiberglass for boards as well, first using a foam core that he sandwiched with marine plywood and then glassed. These boards were by far lighter than any other boards being made, dropping below the fifty pound mark for the first time ever, until he produced one board that weighed only nine pounds in ‘48; and in ‘49 he made and sold 100 surfboards by hand, an astounding number considering there were only roughly 1000 surfers in California at the time.
Despite his gimp arm, Simmons was a big-wave charger, often surfing the Tijuana Sloughs and was one of the first to surf Pipeline in Oahu when he ventured all over the North Shore in ‘53. Simmons also acted as a mentor to future big wave surfers Greg Noll and Buzzy Trent, along with numerous other surfer/shapers including Dale Velzy, Rennie Yater, and Joe Quigg.
He died surfing at Windansea in 1954, at the age of 35. It is believed his board knocked him unconscious and he drowned, his body was not found until three days later.
Aloha for now…
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Trey Highton, KIMA SURFARIS, Bali