Santa Cruz, California

1950s – The Wetsuit Was Invented By World War II Veteran Jack O’Neill

Hamilton Historical Records

In the 1950s, after serving as a U.S. Navy fighter pilot during World War II, Jack O’Neill developed a wetsuit which made “cold-water surfing” popular. In 1959, after acquiring word wide acclaim for his invention, Jack O’Neill opened a surf shop in Santa Cruz, California.

The building where the original O’Neill surf store was located was demolished. In the place of the former surf shop a Jack O’Neill Restarunt was established.

Photograph of Jack O’Neill at the balcony of his home in 2006.

On June 7, 2017, Jack O’Neill passed away, at the age of 94, at his beachfront home in Santa Cruz, California.

Published by Hamilton Historical Records

I'm a Virginia historian and legal expert who is related to individuals who rode on the Mayflower ship, American founding father George Mason IV, three Union veterans from the U.S. Civil War, two of whom marched with General Sherman to Atlanta, two Confederate veterans, and President Theodore Roosevelt’s and Franklin Roosevelt’s family.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s