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Ralph Samuelson
Waterskis
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Ralph first came up with the idea of skiing on
water when he was 18 years old in 1922.
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Just days before his 19th birthday, Ralph Samuelson managed to get
up on a pair of water skis. But his inventive journey began many
years earlier when he began to dream of skimming over the lake.
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He and other neighborhood kids used to snow ski. His first attempts
to water ski used barrel staves – that didn’t work.
Then he tried snow skis – that didn’t work either! Back
to the drawing board! Then he tried 8 foot long boards. They didn’t
work but then he had an idea! The problem was that the fronts of
the planks kept digging into the water, causing him to flip forward
– kersplat.
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But what if the tips were bent like a snow ski?
He boiled the tips and used clamps and braces to curve the tips
of the boards. And EUREKA! It worked!
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