Windsurf · Invention
1968
Drake and Schweitzer file the Windsurfer patent
A mast on a universal joint, a wishbone boom and a sail you steer with your hands; the patent that defines windsurfing is filed.
US 3,487,800, Fig. 1 (1970) · public domain
On 27 March 1968 Hoyle Schweitzer and James Drake filed a patent for what they called a wind-propelled apparatus: a board with a mast that is not fixed but “universally mounted”, so the whole rig can be tilted in any direction, with a wishbone boom for the sailor to hold and steer with. There is no rudder. You steer by raking the sail forward or back, and you hold the whole thing up with your own arms.
The patent was granted on 6 January 1970 as US 3,487,800. Figure 1, drawn for the application and vectorised here from the public-domain patent page, shows the parts that still define the sport: the board, the mast and sail, the boom and the daggerboard. The universal joint at the mast foot is detailed in Figure 2.
Drake, an aeronautical engineer, worked out the mechanics; Schweitzer, a businessman, built the company. Newman Darby had sailed a board with a hand-held rig in Pennsylvania a few years earlier, and his published design was later cited in legal challenges to the patent, but it was this filing, and the Windsurfer that came out of it, that turned the idea into a sport.