“I decided that if you could ski on snow, you could ski on water. Everyone... thought I was nuts."
Ralph Samuelson, waterskiing pioneer
Messing about on the water provides many of life's great pastimes; swimming, fishing, and boating being just a few. In 1922 one more activity was added to this list—waterskiing. Its inventor, Ralph Samuelson (1903- 1977), was already a keen exponent of aquaplaning— the art of being dragged behind a boat on a shaped piece of wood—but he wanted to replicate snow skiing on the water. After .several abortive attempts with barrel staves and snow skis, he build his own skis out of 8-foot (2.5 m) lengths of plank, using his mother's copper kettle to boil the ends of the wood to shape them. When they were ready, his next task was to work out the correct technique for getting himself "launched."
For many years, the origins of the water ski were controversial, with several groups claiming they were the first, and a 1924 patent for "Akwa Skees" confusing matters. It was not until 1963, when a reporter accidentally stumbled across Samuelson and his story, that he finally became recognized as the "father of waterskiing," and inducted into the Water Ski Hall of Fame. Samuelson himself, despite touring and putting on exhibitions of his waterskiing, had not even realized he had done anything extraordinary.
Samuelson went on to be the first to achieve a water ski jump, launching himself off an angled diving platform greased with lard in 1925, and also being pulled behind a World War I flying boat at speeds of up to 80 miles (129 km) per hour. His second pair of skis (the originals having been broken by a particularly heavy landing) can still be seen in the museum at the Water Ski Hall of Fame.
