The magic boards I had in the '70s and '80s and much of the '90s all sprang from the hands of good shapers, great shapers even, but each board was still a unicorn. Place your order and cross your fingers. I was a "team rider" from way back, and got boards cheap, or free, which was nice, but really more of a necessity as I'd go through a half-dozen before snagging a keeper, and most keepers were just decent, not magic. It was frustrating. Your magic ride finally turns to splinters, then four months later you're back in the factory with your mildly pissed-off shaper, having discarded his last three efforts, eyeballing a rail line still warm from the planer, saying "Yeah man! 

 is gonna be a magic one!" Hoping its true, but knowing its a rain dance. A one-in-ten shot.

I didn't rejoice immediately when computers and machines came into the boardmaking equation in a big way, whenever that was, I think the mid-'90s. Don Kadowaki, my main shaper at the time, was doing everything by hand, my needs were simple and unchanging—one 6' 1" squashtail per year, two or three 6' 6" Jim Banks-style roundpins—and for a half-dozen years we were on a roll. Don's boards were fine, some much better than fine. Then they weren't. Nobody's fault. At some point I was looking for a different feel, Don's bottom curve preferences evolved, not sure exactly what happened, but that was pretty much that. So I got a machine-made Merrick. Then a machine-made Rusty. Another Merrick or two, then four Rustys. Everything worked. Magic wasn't guaranteed, but every board was in the ballpark. Super dependable. Like sliding from one late-model BMW to another. Perfect rocker. Precision-controlled volume. Single-feature adjustment capability. Duplicatable.

Never looked back. Pretty soon it was like, Keep your calloused yellow-nailed craftsman hands away from my board. Give me lab-strength computing power jacked into high-end graphite-lubed triple-axis laser-guided hardware. Algorithm is my shaping guru.

French surfer and engineering genius Michel Barland was onto all of this before anybody. Way before. Look at him up there with a computer that 

, no mouse, no trackpad, no interface to speak of, just rows of numbers onscreen, for all I know the thing's running on vacuum tubes and punch cards. This was 1984. Barland, one of the original Biarritz surfers, already had spent five years developing a computer-driven shaping machine. Here's what SURFER said at the time:

Over 5,000 hours of programming has gone into the Barland System. First, the computer receives its instructions—up to 50 pieces of information that describe the board's dimensions and features, including wings, channels, and fin-box positions. The blank is held in place on the shaping stands by suction pads while the cutting head carries out its work at 8,000 RPM. Bottom curve, planshape, deck and rails are cut in with amazing accuracy, exact to a ten-micron margin of error. Under the current program, given some fifty calculations, the machine can shape a six-foot surfboard in 12-15 minutes.

The article says Barland had already made 1,500 boards by that time, but as far as I know none of them ever left the Continent, and the tech-driven process itself certainly hadn't yet been replicated in America or Australia. Why not? Probably because home computers weren't a thing quite yet, and the machinery involved was expensive, and maybe the whole idea at that point just seemed too Frankenstein. Might also have had something to do with Barland's marketing. The man had a huge bulging brain, but his label for this brave new label read "Barland Computer Pre-Shaped." Right there on the deck of your board. Not sexy.

I stayed at the Barland family house for a week in 1988. The house, a rambling old building filled with his offspring, was attached to the factory where Barland did all his work. I was all set for boards at that time, and hadn't yet given a thought to the marriage of computers and surf equipment. Michel didn't speak English, I didn't speak French. I left the house each morning to surf Hossegor, while he locked himself into the factory and coded the sport's future. I don't remember much about him. Quiet, friendly, a little intense. The one thing I do recall is that, during the huge family dinners each night, at the very end, one of his kids would come out of the kitchen with a big steaming bowl of hot chocolate, which would be placed in front of Michel. All dinner long he'd sit, listen, quietly and directly answer whatever question came his way from the family, but pretty detached for the most part. When that bowl of hot chocolate hit the table in front of him, though, he smiled like a kid. Lit the room up.

Two more pictures of Barland and his machine, in 1984, shot by Darrell Jones.

RAISE A GLASS OF BORDEAUX TO MICHEL BARLAND, FATHER OF THE COMPUTER-MADE SURFBOARD

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