Skateboarding doesnt have a certain origin. Nobody truly knows which is it. Some people believe that Skate began on the surfing beaches of California, U.S.A. around the 50s. People say that some surfers put wheels on a piece of wood. This began because of the lack of good waves to surf, and surfers just looked for another sport when this happened. It mainly started like sidewalk surfers?
The design of skateboards was inspired in surfboards, at the beginning they where quite similar, but with the time the design changed because of commodities. The first manufactured skateboards where born in 1965. They were an inch thick, had rubber wheels, and cast ?iron trucks.
Competitions soon started down the sidewalks between skateboarders, some of this were: Free Style, Slalom, Down Hill, High Jump and finally Long Jump. Some time passed by, and skateboarders started using drainage channels, routes, and some places around buildings.
Vert skating began using swimming pools. The transitions were too vertical and fast, and jumps turned better.
The first Skateparks were built in the U.S. This were the main hang-out places for skaters, soon, pool and Vert skating became the most popular form of skating. Vert skating demanded harder boards, so manufacturers built them wider for more stability and changed the old rubber wheels for polyurethane wheels, which were faster!
Barefoot skating was now forgotten except by a few of the old die-hard "sidewalk surfers". The new skaters figured out that gym shoes had more stability and didn't hurt as bad when you wipe-out.
Early eighties arrived with a dive in skateboarding popularity. Skateparks closed the doors, manufacturers stopped manufacturing and worst of all, skateboard magazines switched over to BMXing and roller-skating. But a few hardcore skaters kept going. Those dedicated skaters advanced skateboarding cy creating their own techniques, writing their own magazines, and building some of there own boards and layouts.
This is when half-pipes arrived. Simpler and cheaper than pools, they could be built by the skater himself. Tricks were used in street skating that, before, had only been used by Vert skaters, Street ollies, slide'n'rolls, and curb grinds( most of which have different names now) are classic as street skaters moves, all of which were made by Vert skaters. Street skating is still probably one of the most popular forms or boarding. Every skater is a street Slater because that's where his roots are from. It's just that some skaters forget a few things along the way.