Sidney Newman Darby Jr. (January 31, 1928 – December 3, 2016) was an American inventor best known as the inventor of the sailboard. Biography He was born in 1928 and grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and began building boats when he was 12. His first boat sank, but he fished it out of the Susquehanna River, near his home, and made it into a home for snakes. Darby and his wife made their home in Saint Johns, Florida, where he died on December 3, 2016 at the age of 88. Sailboard Darby is known and recognized by some as the “Father of Windsurfing”. While he was decided against seeking a patent due to the related expense (and drama), he developed the first craft and marketed it nationally, selling a few hundred boards. Darby first conceived of a hand-operated square sail attached to a catamaran in 1948, when he was 20. In the mid-1960s, Darby conceived the "Darby Sailboard": a hand-held square rigged "kite" sail on a floating platform for recreational use. The craft, sailed with the operator’s back to the sail, was difficult to operate in strong and gusty winds, in particular because the boom could be handled from only one side of the sail. Darby had taught himself to sail a 10-foot model on lakes in high wind between 1964 and 1965. He published his design in August 1965 Popular Science magazine, which exhibited a primitive rope universal joint) it did refer to a "more complex swivel step for advanced riders not shown." The sail was like a kite and was sailed with one's back to the sail. Popular Science magazine was published in many countries around the world, establishing the Darby sailboard as "prior art" in several legal jurisdictions. Darby and his wife Naomi organized Darby Industries, Inc. in 1964, with his brother, Kenneth, was also active in the company. However, the sailboard design never gained popularity, and Darby's company ceased operations by the end of the 1960s. His sport, however, became an international Olympic sport which he enjoyed on his later years. Windsurfer patent cases Darby did not patent his design or any of his subsequent models attached to surfboards, and the Californians Jim Drake (a sailor) and Hoyle Schweitzer (a surfer) took out the first patent on Drake's Windsurfer design in 1968. The universal sail system with pivotal mast was already in public use from Darby's