Wetsuit - Suit Creator History

Suit Creator History

In 1952, UC Berkeley and subsequent UC San Diego SIO physicist Hugh Bradner, who is considered to be the original inventor and "father of the modern wetsuit," had the insight that a thin layer of trapped water could be tolerated between the suit fabric and the skin, so long as insulation was present in the fabric in the form of trapped bubbles. In this case, the water would quickly reach skin temperature and the air in the fabric would continue to act as the thermal insulation to keep it that way. The suit did not need to be dry to be insulative. Dr. Bradner clearly understood that the gas in the suit fabric provided the thermal insulation, as his letter notes, but in the popular mind, the layer of water between skin and suit has been credited with this task. He initially sent his ideas to Lauriston C. "Larry" Marshall. Marshall was involved in a U.S. Navy/National Research Council Panel on Underwater Swimmers. However, it was Willard Bascom, an engineer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, who suggested neoprene as a feasible material to Bradner.

However, Bradner and Bascom were not overly interested in profiting from their design and were unable to successfully market a version to the public. They attempted to patent their neoprene wetsuit design, but their application was rejected because the design was viewed as too similar to a flight suit. The United States Navy also turned down Bradner's and Bascom's offer to supply its swimmers and frogmen with the new wetsuits due to concerns that the gas in the neoprene component of the suits might make it easier for naval divers to be detected by underwater sonar. The first written documentation of Bradner's invention was in a letter to Marshall, dated June 21, 1951.

Traditionally, most say it was Jack O'Neill who invented the wetsuit and started using neoprene, a closed-cell foam which was shown to him by his bodysurfing friend, Harry Hind, who knew of it as an insulating material in his laboratory work. After experimenting with the material and finding it superior to other insulating foams, Jack founded the successful wetsuit manufacturing company called O'Neill in a garage in 1952, later relocating to Santa Cruz, California in 1959 with the motto "It's Always Summer on the Inside".

Bob and Bill Meistrell, from Manhattan Beach, California, also started experimenting with neoprene around 1953. They started a company which would later be named Body Glove.

Neoprene was not the only material used in early wetsuits, particularly in Europe. The French-made Pêche-Sport Suit and the UK-made Siebe Gorman Swimsuit were both made out of sponge rubber. The Heinke Dolphin Suit of the same period, also made in England, came in a green male and a white female version, both manufactured from natural rubber lined with stockinet.