Way earlier this summer I was on the phone with Jeffrey Brodie. He’s the deputy director of the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

He was talking about an upcoming exhibit saluting skateboarding and legend Tony Hawk.

I grew up in Southern California skateboarding the 70s. The sport had exploded into popular culture then. To have the Smithsonian honor the sport of my youth was exciting.

Back in the day, I was unaware at the time that the invention of polyurethane wheels revolutionized the sport.

The following is an excerpt from the August 2011 Prototype, the Lemelson Center’s newsletter:

In 1978 George Powell, a mechanical engineer and avid skateboarder, and Stacy Peralta, who was among the first pro skaters in the 1970s, founded Powell-Peralta, one of the most prominent skateboard manufacturing companies of the early 1980s.

Powell-Peralta used skaters’ input to design its boards, making them highly desirable to the up-and-coming skater. To promote its expanding line of products, Powell-Peralta created the “Bones Brigade,” one of the greatest skate teams ever assembled. The best skaters of the day, including Steve Caballero, Lance Mountain, Mike McGill,  Rodney Mullen, and a young Tony Hawk traveled the country, displaying their tricks and elevating their sport to new heights.

In 1985, Powell-Peralta became the seventeen-year-old Hawk’s primary sponsor, with Quiksilver following soon after. Founded in the early 1970s, Quiksilver was one of the first skate and surf companies to manufacture boards along with an ever-growing line of apparel for both men and women.

Another of Hawk’s sponsors, Tracker Trucks, a skateboard truck company founded in 1975, is credited with introducing the first widely accepted truck designed specifically for skateboarding. Hawk’s 1986 board features Tracker magnesium trucks and a lapper–a now-obsolete small piece of plastic that protects the truck bolt and provides a smooth surface when grinding–to cover the rear truck.

As the popularity of skate tours increased, sponsors found expanding media opportunities to advertise their products within the skate community. One of the most ubiquitous was stickers. For example, the Powell-Peralta flying-skull sticker on the bottom of Hawk’s deck is from Powell-Peralta’s 1986 Summer Tour across the United States. Vernon Courtlandt Johnson, an influential skate artist credited with introducing the skull into skate culture, designed the sticker for the tour and also designed Hawk’s trademark logo, the now-famous Tony Hawk iron cross design that is prominently displayed on the bottom of the deck.

The Carlsbad Pipelines sticker represents Tony’s early career and his willingness to support hometown skate shops. After moving with his family to Carlsbad, California, while still in high school, Hawk became a fixture at Carlsbad Pipelines surf shop. Skaters often promoted hometown shops that helped them out at the beginning of their careers…