A former commercial fisherman widely credited with inventing the neoprene wetsuit. The attribution is incorrect鈥攎ost historians now believe California physicist came up with it. (See Wetsuit.) But no one did a better job of making the wetsuit cool than Denver native O鈥橬eill, a water-loving businessman who opened his first surf shop near San Francisco in 1952. O鈥橬eill offered essential additions, including a stretchy nylon laminated onto the neoprene. More crucially, he popularized the image of the wetsuit-clad surfer, including one memorable ad that read 鈥淚t鈥檚 Always Summer on the Inside鈥 and featured a topless woman pulling on one of his suits. 鈥淗e was a bearded one-eyed NorCal Don Draper,鈥 says Matt Warshaw, author of .
(Photo: Tim Tomkinson)
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