Peter Chilvers as a 12 year old English boy on Hayling Island off the south coast of Britain, was the first person to conceive and produce a board with a sail. This board formed the basis for modern windsurfers. Peter Chilvers has been a successful engineer and has founded a sailing and windsurfing centre in London, where he lives today.
Chilvers is currently heading the bid for a £40 million sailing and windsurfing centre on Hayling Island to regenerate the area and recognise it as the home of windsurfing.
Chilvers has successfully won the patent for the windsurfer in the UK, Europe, Canada and America. Other worldwide patents are still being contested. The history of windsurfing, and its ultimate inventor are a source of much conjecture in the windsurfing community. Most people (including the courts) recognise Chilvers as the father of windsurfing after successful legal action in 1980 and 1982.
In this interview with Jim Drake Drake recognises Chilvers' invention in 1958.
Chilvers' invention has been incorrectly attributed and patented by 3 other inventors, Drake, Newman Darby and Schweitzer. As mentioned this patent has successfully been challenged and it was proven that all 3 could have had prior knowledge of Chilvers' invention and that Darby was in fact on Hayling Island in the late 1950's.
Newman Darby is often incorrectly credited as the first man to conceive the idea of connecting a hand-held sail rig fastened with a universal joint to a floating platform for recreational use, in the early sixties. Darby had organized Darby Industries, Inc. in 1964 to build what they called sailboards. However, Darby's boards were inefficient and did not enjoy significant popularity.
The fathers of windsurfing as we know it today were Peter Chilvers as a 12 year old boy, a Californian aeronautical engineer Jim Drake and his friend Hoyle Schweitzer. Drake has designed a surfboard-like board with a triangular sail and wishbone booms, connected to the board via a universal joint, and Schweizter popularized the new sport. The details of the original designs are available in Drake's whitepaper on windsurfing. Also, the history of invention is discussed in this interview with Jim Drake.
Drake and Schweitzer patented the invention in 1968. Schweitzer incorporated Windsurfing International for promoting the sport and managing the patent, and bought the rights from Drake in 1973. Windsurfing caught on in Europe, and local companies started manufacturing windsurfing equipment. In 1983 Schweitzer sued a Swiss board manufacturer Mistral for infringing on his patent, however Mistral won the case by bringing up prior art by Darby. Schweitzer had to reapply for a patent under severely limited terms, and finally it expired in 1987.
Windsurfing has experienced a boom in the 1980s. Windsurfing became an Olympic sport in 1984, and a shortboard was invented around the same time. However, windsurfing was in a sharp decline in mid-1990s, as the equipment got specialized and hard to sail. Now the sport is experiencing a revival, as new beginner-friendly designs became readily available.
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