MotoBoard
MotoBoard was a mass-produced motorized skateboard, made possible by the advent in the mid-1970s of polyurethane skate wheels, as well as the production of lightweight small industrial two-stroke engines.
History
Shortly after urethane wheels became available, Jim Rugroden, a student in Berkeley, California, designed and builtthe first MotoBoard in the garage of his brother's home in the South San Francisco Bay Area town of Campbell while on break from his physics studies in summer 1975. The MotoBoard evolved from a simple push start prototype, to a precision automatic shaft-driven sport vehicle.
During a photo shoot for Skateboarder Magazine in Carlsbad, California, near San Diego, Rugroden met Bill Posey, an onlooking entrepreneur, and they eventually teamed-up to form Quantimotion, Inc., DBA MotoBoard International.
Originally, MotoBoard Intl. operated from both a small northern California shop in Sunnyvale, where Rugroden manufactured the units, and Posey's established southern California office in Carlsbad, where much of the promotion and sales were generated. In 1979 the company was consolidated in a new, much larger facility in the newly established Foreign Trade Zone complex in San Jose, California.