Scrolling through the Hobie Alter death notices last week was pretty awe-inspiring. The sheer volume of accomplishment he managed during his busy 80 years of life, for starters. Surfboards to skateboards to boats to gliders. Hobie had a genius for production. He industrialized our sport, as I keep reading again and again. But the man himself actually seemed to have very little of the industrialist about him. This was the other thing that kept coming through in my readings. Yes, business mattered to Hobie. A lot. But it didn't seem to be the driving force. The whole notion of Alter being "the Henry Ford of surfing," in fact, seems a disservice to what really made Hobie unique. Which was: keeping his hands busy and losing himself in a project. More specifically, a project that would allow Hobie to have a better time outdoors, usually in the water. Altruism didn't drive him. But we all had a better time in the great outdoors because Hobie himself had a better time. His enjoyment led to our enjoyment led to stacks of money in Hobie's bank account. Fair enough. The man deserves all the credit and praise and more that has showered down on him these past few days.

Still, reading the obits, I can't help but spare a thought for Dave Sweet.

Time and again, Hobie is directly or by implication cited as the inventor of the polyurethane foam surfboard blank. What he actually did was 

 the foam blank. Sweet got there first. By two years, give or take. As best as I can piece it together, the timeline goes like this:

 Sweet begins working on the polyurethane blank. Over the next two years, he will build a series of DIY molds (working up to a 2,000-pound clamshell fiberglass-and-steel monster) and tweak the chemical mix endlessly looking for the magic formula. For the most part, he does nothing more than fill the nearest dumpster with foam blank rejects.

 Hobie Surfboards opens on Pacific Coast Highway, in Dana Point. Alter himself does all the shaping. Balsa boards only.

 Sweet figures it out. His new foam blanks are not perfect, but close enough. He sets up a wooden easel on the beach at Malibu, props a foam board on it for display, and begins selling. Business is slow. Just a guess, but I'd say Sweet sold something like 25 boards during this period.  

 Dave Sweet Surfboards opens up, in Santa Monica. No balsa. Foam-core boards only.

 A chemical salesman hands Alter a small chunk of polyurethane foam. At a party that night, Hobie whips the foam block out of pocket and says, "This is it, boys, the future of surfboards, right here."

 Hobie and Grubby Clark, together, set out on their own trial-and-error foam-making adventure.

 Hobie Surfboards begins stocking foam boards.

Here's where the story gets weird. Hobie said, on record, at least twice, that he had no idea Dave Sweet was working on foam, or that Sweet was selling foam boards. On the beach at Malibu, no less. Two years before Hobie brought his foam boards to market! The smartest retailer in surfing claims not to know that a competitor has beaten him to the punch on the biggest boardmaking breakthrough of the era? I raise a skeptical eyebrow.

And weirder still. For years to come, the surf press described Sweet and Alter as "co-inventors" of foam boards—and Sweet never said a word otherwise. Mark Fragale did a profile on Sweet for 

 magazine in 2000, and afterward the two kept in touch. Two years later, when I was first-drafting the book version of 

, I asked Fragale why Sweet hadn't been more aggressive in claiming his rightful first-to-foam status. (Sweet was known as a good guy, but was also intense and private, with a bit of a temper. Still is.) Fragale said something like, while Hobie may have been a kinder, gentler, fun-seeking businessman, he was still very much a businessman—the 

 of the Dana Point Mafia, in fact—and Sweet deemed it best to eat the "co-inventor" line and not make a fuss. He didn't want to fight the power, in other words. And later, for a lont time, Sweet just didn't care enough to campaign on his own behalf. 

He held that position until 2005 when Steve Pezman talked to him for a 

 interview. Sweet was 78 at the time and recovering from a mild stroke, but overall pretty sound. He didn't come out swinging with regards to foam, but he was no longer sitting on his hands, either. "In mid-1956 I figured out the foaming process," he told Pezman. "That was a year-and-a-half before Hobie and Grubby. Or more." Furthermore, Sweet said his foam was "structurally far superior" to the other guys' foam. "I'm friends [with Grubby]. On the phone, he will admit mine was better."

Put a halo on Hobie Alter, sure. But place it so as to not throw a shadow across Dave Sweet. He deserves that.

DAVE SWEET: FOUNTAINHEAD OF FOAM

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