Sherman Poppen lives in Muskegon, Michigan, a place where it snows a lot. During Christmas in 1965, his two young daughters were bugging him because they wanted to go outside and play. So, he decided to try an experiment so that his daughters could have more fun during winter time. He came up with an idea to ride on the snow with skis and leather straps for their feet. His daughters loved riding on snow and other people started to buy the skis Poppen has made. Poppen started to name this skis "snurfs" and riding on snow with a snurf "snurfing". Later on, millions of snurfs were sold and snurfing started to become very popular. It became so popular that it even became a competitive sport. Later, a man named Jake Burton Carpenter, signed up to compete in a snurfing competition with his own modified board. He was qualified to compete due to his modified board. He started selling his own pair of modified snurfs and started to call them "snurfboards". Poppen didn't like Burton using the word "snurf" that he had invented, so he told him to change it. Burton changed his boards to be called "snowboards", which today, it is named snowboards instead of snurfs.
The author of this article, Sarah Laskow, writes this article in order to inform us and entertain us with this short story. She does a great job telling the story and adding the actual sayings Sherman Poppen had said. Also, Laskow sounds smooth throughout the article making it not dull to read, but enjoyable. Overall, this article fulfills its purpose, to inform us and to entertain us.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/snowboarding-was-almost-called-snurfing/381308/#disqus_thread
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