The engineer who invented the Boogie Board
Tom Morey 1935–2021
The first time Tom Morey hit the water on his homemade board, he knew he’d invented something special. An accomplished surfer, jazz musician, and aeronautical engineer, Morey was living in Hawaii in 1971 when he began tinkering with surfboards. At the time, most boards were made of hard, heavy materials and could cause serious injuries in a wipeout. Morey took a different approach, cutting a block of polyethylene packing foam in half and shaping a rounded nose and square tail with a clothing iron. Morey then took his 4-foot6, 3-pound creation to the beach and was astonished that he could feel the waves through the board and could catch even small waves at low tide. His invention—which he called the Boogie Board, for the “wiggle and jiggle” of riding that he associated with swing music—would introduce millions of people to the joys of wave riding. On a Boogie Board, Morey said, “You are communing with the rhythms of nature.”
Born in Detroit, Morey fell in love with the ocean as a child after his family moved to Laguna Beach, Calif., said The Washington Post. He “began surfing in his teens and was part of the California surf set that was featured in 1960s beach-party films.” After studying math at the University of Southern California, he went to work as an engineer at Douglas Aircraft before opening a surf shop in Ventura, Calif. The following year he launched the
Tom Morey Noseriding Contest, the first surfing competition “to offer prize money,” said the San Clemente, Calif., Times. Growing “disenchanted with life on the mainland,” Morey moved to Hawaii’s Big Island in 1969, surfing by day and playing drums in hotels and clubs at night.
By 1974, Morey was back in California to manufacture Boogie Boards, said The New York Times. He sold 80,000 boards for $37 a pop in 1977, the same year that toy manufacturer Kransco bought the company for a moderate sum and no royalties. Morey remained a prolific inventor, coming up with a surfboard that could fold into a suitcase, a three-man chess game, and a universal numbering system. He wasn’t bitter that he’d missed out on a fortune with his premature Boogie Board deal. “Say I had sold this for a billion dollars,” he said in 2003. “I’m still going to be sitting here in my bathing suit.”