What did the first skateboard look like?

Answer 1

My best guess is that it was probably a piece of 1"X6" board, attached to a couple of roller skate wheels that some kid put together with nails and a hammer in the garage.

In the old days, roller skates were a clamp on type that had a metal frame which you could attach to your shoes. The front wheels and the rear wheels were uwsually made of steel for sidewalk use and could be separated, leaving a bit of metal framework for each set of wheels. If one of the pair of skates broke, there wasn't a lot you could do with a single skate.

Kids are inventive. Need I say more?

actually it wasnt a kid that invented it it was a guy named bill Richard. him and some roller blade company did that. then a women tha owned a Surfing company decided to start making them her name was Makaha she was one of the manufacters. and it wasn't intill the 1950's that they where frist invented and then just went from there. Google that it up it exists. anyway it wasn't with hammer and nails either otherwise the wheels wouldn't turn or even move. plus it wasnt that old as u can see from what i put up earlyer, and yes i agree with that kids are inventive but i don't think they would have the brain power at that time to invent somthing like that, that actually worked. so for all u skateboarders who love to skateboard say thanks to bill Richard. he's the one that made it all possible. Also in the 1950's back then it was called "sidewalk surfing".. just somthing i thought u all should know.

Having made skateboards from skates in the 1950's I can tell you exactly how it was done. Many of us had Roller Derby-type skates in those days - the kind that clamped onto your shoes. We'd first removed the clamps on the front of the skates. Using a hacksaw, we cut off the heel of the skates. Now we have a flat surface to work with. Yes, we used nails and just bent them over the skates attaching them to a 1x6 board. We'd use a wood saw to round the front and back of the board. If you were lucky, somebody's Dad in the neighborhood had a drill with metal bits. If you had that, then you could drill holes in the skates and mount the skates to the board with screws rather than nails. This was a much more sturdy design. The rear of the skate was attached to the rear of the skateboard and the front of the skate was attached to the front of the skateboard. Finally, leaning to one side or the other did not result in a sharp turn, at least not that you could make a corner on a sidewalk at the end of the street. We removed or cut-down in size the rubber piece on each skate truck. That did the trick but it also made the skateboard much more unstable. You could fall much more easily but you sure could make a turn well. We'd decorate them with paint. We did this about 1957 in Hermosa Beach, California. We had some hairy rides down 8th Place toward Pacific Coast highway. Those were the days.