HISTORY: The first longboards were made by Preston Nichols in the 1940s and 50s as an alternative to surfing when the waves were flat.  Early longboards were improvised planks of wood with roller skate wheels in a practice known as Sidewalk Surfing.  Longboarding became popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but its popularity died by 1965, only to stage a comeback in 1972 when Frank Nasworthy and the Cadillac Wheel Company introduced the urethane longboard wheel, which allowed skaters to reach very high downhill speeds.