The Wetsuit: Born of San Francisco's Frigid Waters

Bay Curious

KQED

Places & Travel, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2026

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jack O'Neill is often credited with inventing the first wetsuit and selling it out of one of the nation's first surf shops near San Francisco's Ocean Beach. But many people don't know that a UC Berkeley physicist had a big role in the wetsuit's early invention too. It's an invention that changed the sport of surfing forever. Now, people surf all kinds of cold locations due to the availability of flexible neoprene suits that keep them warm. Additional Resources: The Wetsuit Changed Surfing -- We've Got a Berkeley Physicist to Thank for It Read the transcript for this episode A Bay Curious Adventure: History in Bloom at the Conservatory of Flowers Event Sign up for our newsletter Got a question you want answered? Ask! Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by going to https://kqed.org/donate/podcasts This story was reported by Gabriela Glueck. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and Olivia Allen-Price. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for a Key QBD podcast comes from Xfinity.
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0:30.7	Support for KQED podcasts comes from Rinse. Rinse knows that mastering the perfect house party table spread takes time, but so does laundry. So Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door expertly cleaned,
0:39.6	and you can take the time once spent sorting and waiting, folding, and queuing to finally
0:45.4	pursue your real passion. Rolling delicate roses of capacola alongside meandering
0:51.6	ribbons of hamones serrano, transforming a humble plank of weathered
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1:03.1	great. From KQED. It's a foggy day at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, just like so many before it.
1:13.6	Everything's gray, cold, and windy, but familiar landmarks stick out in the fog.
1:20.6	Seal Rock, the cliff house. It's the early 1950s, and the waves are roaring.
1:29.8	There are a few surfers paddling out.
1:34.0	They're wearing shorts, just shorts.
1:37.4	When you first went in the water, your fingers would sting and your toes would sting.
1:42.9	And that stinging would begin to increase a little bit up your
1:45.9	arms and so forth. Jim Gallagher was part of a group of surfers who braved Northern California's
1:52.3	frigid waters in the early days of surfing here, a place where ocean temperature stays in the 50s
	...

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