Snurfer

According to the 1966 patent[1] by inventor Sherman Poppen, it was wider and shorter than a pair of skis, with an anti-skid foot rest.

With the help of Cee-J Wholesale Toy Company (Carl and Luella Suchovsky in Muskegon Heights, MI), the Snurfer was distributed all over the country.

By 1977, Jake Burton Carpenter, an avid competitive snurfer, began developing an improved model without the rope and with the addition of rigid bindings for ski boots to the board.

[citation needed] In 1980, two of them, Aleksey Ostatnigrosh and Alexei Melnikov, with Boris Kovalev’s help, started changing the design of the Snurfer to allow jumping and to improve control on hard packed snow.

In 1982, Aleksey Ostatnigrosh and Alexei Melnikov attached a foot binding to the Snurfer and patented their innovation.