In 1951, a U.C. Berkeley physicist named Hugh Bradner devoted some “weekend time” to improving gear for Navy frogmen. Bradner was a veteran of the Manhattan Project who helped develop the trigger mechanism for the atomic bomb; he was also an avid swimmer and diver. At the time, Navy divers wore constricting rubber “dry suits” over long wool underwear. When they leaked, the wool got wet and lost its warmth.
Bradner theorized that a foam-rubber material that trapped air bubbles would retain its insulating properties even if it wasn’t watertight. The material he chose was neoprene, a synthetic rubber created by DuPont in 1930.
He took his suit to Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Mountains, for a winter test. “I remember walking from shore, and there was ice at the edge of the lake,” he later told The Los Angeles Times. “I had to break it to get in. I splashed around.”
Bradner would go on to invent underwater contact lenses and a sunscreen with fluorescent compounds, but he never patented his wet-suit design, and the Navy didn’t pursue production.
At the time, the few who surfed California’s frigid waters did so in 20-minute increments before seeking the warmth of a beachside bonfire. In San Francisco, a former Navy pilot named Jack O’Neill surfed at Ocean Beach, where year-round water temperatures hovered in the mid-50s. Down the coast, the twin brothers Bob and Bill Meistrell surfed Manhattan Beach, whose winter waters are nearly as cold. Both were trying to find a way to stay in the water longer. O’Neill, who later founded the O’Neill brand, made himself a surf vest out of PVC foam and plastic in 1953, then began using neoprene, which he learned about from his friend Harry Hind, a pharmacist and body surfer. The Meistrells, who would go on to found the Body Glove brand, had a dive-shop business partner, Bev Morgan, who had read a report about Bradner’s invention at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography library and began making suits for his scuba-diving friends.
The early wet suits were fragile and nearly impossible to get on and off. It took quite a bit of experimentation to make them practical, and the refinements continue to this day. “Every year, there are new zippers,” says Matt Warshaw, a surf historian. “It’s almost like car design — you just keep making them a little better.”