An insulating garment that allows individuals to spend more time in cold water. It has been especially influential in the history of scuba diving and surfing. 鈥淭ake away the wetsuit and you鈥檝e lopped off 70 percent of the places where people surf and 90 percent of the hours they can put in,鈥 says Matt Warshaw, who runs the website .
The first wetsuit was created in the 1950s out of neoprene, an invention some attribute to surfer Jack O鈥橬eill and others to University of California at Berkeley physicist . The new creation was surprisingly slow to catch on. 鈥淏ack then there was a machismo attached to surfing. You went out there, froze, lit some tires on the beach to get warm, and did it all again,鈥 says Warshaw. 鈥淭he sport was for tough guys. If you wore a wetsuit, you were mocked for being a sissy.鈥 According to legend, that all changed when surfer and diver enlisted board manufacturers to outfit their athletes in the new neoprene suits, branded with company logos. A week later, the best surfers in California were all wearing them. The suit has also been useful in activities like kite-boarding and triathlon, allowing individuals to work in open water in varied seasons.
Over time, designs have become more diverse, ranging from one-millimeter-thick, torso-only versions (called shorties) to ten-millimeter-thick, full-body suits for submersion in polar seas. Though most suits are still made with neoprene, companies like are working with more eco-friendly materials鈥攍ike , derived from the guayule plant鈥攖hat don鈥檛 rely on petroleum.