Frank Nasworthy

Who is Frank Nasworthy?

Frank Nasworthy is notable in the history of skateboarding for introducing polyurethane wheel technology to the sport in the early 1970s.

After graduating from Annandale High School in Northern Virginia in 1969, Nasworthy attended Virginia Tech for a year. Back with his family for the summer of 1970, he visited a plastics factory in Purcellville called Creative Urethane, owned by a friend’s father. The factory had experimented with a polyurethane roller skate wheel that was sold to Roller Sports Inc., which supplied wheels for rental skates at roller rinks. The rationale was that a softer wheel with improved grip would help novice roller skaters, but the wheel was largely rejected by roller skaters who favored the hard steel wheels that allowed for faster speeds on the wooden floors of the roller rinks.

Up to this point, skateboards had also been manufactured with either the same steel wheels as rollerskates, or out of a clay composite – a combination of plastic, paper, and finely ground walnut shells. These wheels wore out far too quickly, in as little as seven or eight hours.