58 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • NOVEMBER 2017 58 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2017 58 LONGISLANDPRESS.CO M • SEPTEMBER 201-----------TUTU111
WHOLLY MOLI
Fred Waller rode the wave of fame
Water skis were among 16 patents for Huntington cinema pro
Huntington’s Fred Waller, a special effects man
at Paramount Pictures’ Astoria studios back in
the 1920s, first imagined water skis as a way to
mount motion picture cameras behind speed
boats.
In the end, riding the things proved to be too
much fun to waste on cinematography.
These were not, let’s be clear, like the skis we
know today. The first models were eight-feet
long and made from the same straight-grain
mahogany used in yachts. Each ski tip was
attached to the boat by a rope, while a second set
led back to a hand bridle. There were no rubber
slippers for the feet.
Waller patented his idea in 1925 and “Akwa
Skeeing,” as he called it, became all the
rage at Abercrombie & Fitch and Marshall
Field. Additional sales were to the U.S. military
and various shipping companies. Screen
icon Clara Bow was the company spokeswoman,
urging boaters everywhere to experience
the thrill of “flashing over the foam, gliding
on the wave tops.”
The skis were one of 16 patents awarded Weller
before his death in 1954, including designs for
the first automatic photographic printer and
timer, a military gunnery trainer used in World
War II and, in the early 1950s, the ultrawide
screen movie system called Cinerama.
“My father wanted me to go to college, but I
wouldn’t go,” Waller told True Magazine in
1953. “I found out that I needed two modern
languages and two dead ones to become a mechanical
engineer and so I said to hell with it.
“I wanted the meat. I wanted to know why
things work. The basic physics and mechanics of
it, and no frills.”
The real inventor of water skis? Probably a
young Minnesota man, Ralph W. Samuelson,
who rode wooden planks to wow the crowds at
Lake Pepin several years before Waller’s patent.
His specialty: leaps of 60 feet or more from lardgreased
ramps.
There would be no jumping the shark without
him. – JESS WINANS