We’ve all heard the stories of Jack O’Neill wanting to stay out surfing longer during the icy cold winters of Santa Cruz, but it appears a Berkeley physicist named Hugh Bradner may have been Jack’s inspiration, according to a story on KQED.com.
O’Neill has long been considered one of the fathers of the wetsuit, along with the Southern California company Body Glove, a distinction both were happy to cultivate. But this line on the O’Neill company blog raises questions about those claims: “Seeing the successful experiments of UC Berkeley physicist Hugh Bradner in the early 1950s, Jack O’Neill switched to neoprene.”
Either way, we’re all thankful for all their work.
[Link: KQED.com]
