Tom Blake
Tom Blake designed, built and patented the first lightweight, hollow surfboards and paddleboards – some of the earliest boards to be commercially produced. A record-breaking swimmer and surfing pioneer, Blake helped make surfing more accessible and more popular, provided a vital tool for ocean lifeguards and influenced the future of board design.
Born in Milwaukee in 1902, Blake learned to swim at a young age and was naturally gifted in the water. When he was 18, he began a lifelong friendship with Hawaiian swimmer and U.S. Olympic Gold Medalist Duke Kahanamoku, considered the "father of modern surfing.” Inspired by Kahanamoku, Blake rode a freight train to Los Angeles and became a competitive swimmer. He went on to win the Amateur Athletic Union 10-Mile Open Water National Swimming Championship in 1922.
While working as a lifeguard, actor and stunt double, Blake also began surfing. As he would later tell Surfer Magazine, “The surfing, it was like heaven to me.” In 1924, Blake visited Hawaii to hone his skills alongside indigenous surfers. At the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, he studied ancient Hawaiian surfboards, which profoundly informed the course of his career. While making connections with Hawaii’s surf community, he began developing innovations based on traditional olo board designs. From 1924 into the 1950s, Blake either lived in or visited Hawaii every year.
To gain a competitive advantage in surfing and paddleboard racing, in 1926 Blake drilled hundreds of holes in a redwood surfboard, reducing its weight, and he made the board watertight with thin layers of veneer. He then reduced board weight even further by carving hollow chambers into the hull of a board. Later, he created a “skin-on-frame” design inspired by airplane wings, using wooden ribs to support a thin wood veneer.
Applying his board innovations, in 1928 Blake won the Pacific Coast Surfing Championship, the first surfing contest held on the U.S. mainland. In 1930 he set world records at the Hawaiian Surfboard Paddling Championships, and in 1932 he became the founder and first winner of the 26-mile Mainland to Catalina Paddleboard Race.
Blake filed for a patent on his “water sled” design in 1931. From 1932 into the early 1950s, four companies produced Blake’s hollow boards of various designs, with versions marketed as surfboards and as paddleboards.
In 1932, after Blake used his hollow board to quickly rescue two sailors whose skiff had capsized off Santa Monica Beach, the Pacific Coast Lifesaving Corps and the Red Cross National Aquatic Schools began using Blake's hollow paddleboards in their rescue training classes. Hollow boards soon became standard lifesaving equipment on beaches worldwide. In 1934, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported, "The American Red Cross officials believe that the Hollow Surfboard is the greatest piece of life saving equipment ever developed.”
Continuing to innovate, in 1935 Blake added a board fin to help surfers change direction at tighter angles and ride waves with greater success. While Blake’s hollow boards would be superseded in the design evolution of lighter boards by those made of modern plastics, the fin remains a crucial part of surfboard construction and is his most lasting contribution to surfboard design. Blake also created an early sailboard, used today in windsurfing.
Blake played an important role in the popularization of surfing. In 1929 he built the first waterproof camera housing, enabling close-up surfing action shots, and photos he took were published in National Geographic. He wrote the first book on the history of surfing, “Hawaiian Surfboard,” in 1935, and when Blake wrote articles on surfboard construction for Popular Mechanics in 1937 and Popular Science in 1939, he included designs so surfers could build their own hollow boards with readily available wood.
During World War II, Blake enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard at age 40. Serving from 1942 to 1945, he taught swimming and ocean rescue, and served on a munitions loading team. He continued working as a lifeguard on beaches in Hawaii, California, Florida and New York until 1964.
Blake received the National Surf Life Saving Association of America Special Recognition "for his own personal accomplishments in ocean lifesaving and the thousands of lives saved because of his inventive contributions.” He also was honored by the International Swimming Hall of Fame, the International Surfing Hall of Fame and the Surfing Walk of Fame.