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Tech

A Brief, Hilarious, and Mostly Awkward History of Hoverboard Attempts

I’m sorry, Marty, the future is still garbage.
Image: Back to the Future

Today is the day Marty McFly and Doc Brown go back to the future, but sadly they'll be coming to an ill-fated universe where no hoverboards, or at least the ones they know of, exist.

When Back to the Future Part II fed the idea of levitating skateboards into the collective consciousness, it also propagated a big hoax. The power of product placement suggested that Mattel was actually making real ones, and for some reason director Robert Zemeckis said in a featurette that toy companies were withholding them from the public due to safety concerns. Obviously that was a joke, and the dream lived on in perpetuity, much to his chagrin.

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In hindsight, it's ridiculous, because we know that toy companies wouldn't be the ones engineering hoverboards; it takes the collective effort of some very determined venture capitalists and bleeding edge mechanics to create anti-gravity devices that can support the weight of a human. But the dream of Marty McFly's flight lived on and plenty of dorky (but some successful!) attempts were made during the past few decades to bring that pink board to life.

2008: Nils Guadagnin, a French artist, creates a hovering skateboard for an exhibition aptly titled "Back to the Future." While the board can't actually support the weight of a human, it does actually use electromagnetic repulsion to levitate.

October 2011: A science fair project at the Paris Diderot University demonstrates what might be the first magnetic levitation-powered hoverboard, which they call the "Mag Surf." It's more a proof of concept than anything though: the board runs on a track and can't shift directions, and you'd need some liquid nitrogen to build a conducting field between the track and the board.

March 2014: The Huvr hoverboard video, featuring Tony Hawk, gets the internet all stirred up. I mean, Tony Hawk! Doc Brown actually showing up! The video's even titled "BELIEF." The product video even had a few people demonstrate the hoverboard in use, with almost none of the campy physics of the original.

Of course it was a troll. The Huvr was actually a Funny Or Die prank prank. We're voting Die on this one.

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October 2014: Arx Pax, a California company, reveals the Hendo hoverboard and swiftly makes headlines. The board's the first real working product that was made for consumer use, even though it requires an actual metal conductive field to work on and can only work for about three minutes before needing a charge. The company says it uses a different sort of magnetic levitation technology than what powers trains, and they also set their sights on much bigger things: buildings, and recently, pulling in satellites for NASA.

December 2014: A Texas maker teases a leaf blower-powered hoverboard called "Mr Hoverboard." Unlike the Hendo, this one doesn't require a metal surface to create a conductive field and can only support riders up to 160 pounds. Also unlike the Hendo, this looks several shades dorkier. The kit is up for $420, if you're into riding leaf blowers I guess.

May 2015: Canadian inventor Catalin Alexandru Duru breaks the Guinness World Record for most airtime on a propeller-powered hoverboard, which he spent 12 months inventing. He was able to lift himself about 10 feet above water to travel over 900 feet, but unfortunately he was limited by however long his batteries could hold out. This distance was over five times the previous record.

Summer 2015: Lexus teases its Slide hoverboard, which critics say didn't actually show anyone riding it. Later that summer, they get pro skater Ross McGouran to ride one, relieving any fears that this could be another fake. Wired explains that unlike the Hendo, this board uses a superconductor that generates a different sort of magnetic field. Unfortunately, we'd still need to embed magnets into any place you'd want to ride, making this still an impractical way of getting around.

October 2015: Hendo releases details about the second version of the Hendo hoverboard, with feedback from Tony Hawk. While the tech isn't much different, the board does have a slimmer profile and a couple bells and whistles: USB connectivity, better battery life, and an emergency safety switch to turn the board off.

Now: #Teens have bogarted the term "hoverboard" for their armless segways, which neither hover nor are really boards. Postmodern takes on language aside, their collective demand has powered an industry of handleless segway makers, both branded and unbranded, all of it expensive.

In the 90s, we had Heelys. In the mid-2010s, we've created an altogether different monster.