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A fingerboard is a working replica (about 1:8 scaled) of a skateboard that a person "rides" by replicating skateboarding maneuvers with their hand. It can also be referred to as a fingerskate or fingerskateboard. The device itself is a scaled-down skateboard complete with moving wheels, graphics and trucks. A fingerboard is commonly around 10 centimeters long, and can have a variety of widths going from 29 to 33mm (or more). Skateboarding tricks may be performed using fingers instead of feet. Tricks done on a fingerboard are inspired by tricks done on real skateboards. Cam Fox Bryant is widely credited as making the first fingerboard, and his skit in Powell-Peralta's "Future Primitive" video brought fingerboarding to the skateboarders of the world in the mid-1980s. Around the same time, he wrote an article on how to make fingerboards in TransWorld SKATEboarding magazine.〔 Although fingerboarding was a novelty within the skateboarding industry for years, as skateboarding reached enormous and widespread popularity in the late 1990s, the folks at toymaker Spin Master realized the potential for the toys, and specifically for products bearing the logos and branding of real skateboarding brands. Their Tech Deck brand caught on during this period and has grown into a widely recognized brand itself in the toy business. Toy fingerboards like the ones Tech Deck manufactures are now available as inexpensive novelty toys as well as high-end collectibles, complete with accessories one would find in use with standard-size skateboards.〔 Fingerboards are also used by skateboarders as 3-D model visual aids to understand potential tricks and maneuvers; many users make videos to document their efforts.〔〔 Similar to fingerboarding, although less popular, handboarding is a scaled-down version of a skateboard that a user controls with their hands. ==History== Fingerboards were first created as homemade toys in the late 1960s and later became a novelty attached to keychains in skate shops (but were also mentioned as a model for a skateboard.) In the 1985 Powell-Peralta skateboarding video "Future Primitive," Lance Mountain rode a homemade fingerboard in a double-bin sink. It is widely accepted that this is where the idea for the Animal Chin ramp came from. Some consider this the earliest fingerboard footage available for public viewing. That homemade fingerboard was built from wood, tubes, and toy train axles.〔 Fingerboards have been a peripheral part of the skateboarding industry since the late 1980s and were originally marketed as keychains.〔 Although barely "rideable," they were improved upon by the Tech Deck brand which mass-produced a "rideable" miniature skateboard.〔 The first entertainment licensed fingerboards were introduced by Bratz Toys, released through a Hong Kong-based toy company named Prime Time Toys, and designed by (Pangea ), the company that helped develop the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toy line for Playmates Toys. The designs were harnessed from entertainment properties such as "Speed Racer," "Woody Woodpecker," "NASCAR," "Heavy Metal," and "Crash Bandicoot." The licensed boards drove the Tech Deck brand into licensing strong urban brands, rather than simply creating their own designs. In the late 1990s, as fingerboards became more prominent outside the skateboarding community, X-Concepts' Tech Decks licensed "actual pro graphics from major skateboard brands" riding "the 1999 fingerboard wave right into Wal-Mart and other major outlets."〔 In 1999 there was a Tech Deck fashion of collecting one of each design similar to the Beanie Baby fad months prior.〔 Thus, Tech Deck, and its distributors at Spin Master Toys, suddenly found themselves a large market to milk. Entertainment-based fingerboard brands couldn't compete against the urban juggernaut, and eventually disappeared. Other "major players in the skateboard industry" soon followed in hopes of reaping profits as young toy-playing children would choose to take up fingerboarding.〔 More modern fingerboards feature "interchangeable wheels and trucks, a fairly accurate scale size, and pad-printed graphics reproduced from the most popular skateboard companies in the business."〔 They thus developed the fingerboard into a collectible toy and the practice into a "form of mental skating".〔 Fingerboarding is popular in Europe, Singapore, Asia and the United States, and there is growing popularity in Eastern Europe.〔 Besides skateshops and the internet, Fingaspeak, a fingerboard store opened in Steyr, Austria although rumored to be the world's first fingerboard store, it joins a very small list of fingerboard stores that are available.〔 Although the sport of fingerboarding originated in the United States over 25 years ago it has really caught on fire in the European scene. The United States is following and it is estimated that although the popularity seems to be in favor of the Europeans, the American Fingerboard scene has equal sales. This may be due to the flooding of the market and the availability of resources in the United States. Fingerboarding has evolved from a hobby to a lifestyle for some people. Fingerboarders have regular "contests, fairs, workshops and other events". Example of these events are: FastFingers, and FlatFace Rendezvous.〔〔 Fingerboard-product sales were estimated at $120-million for 1999.〔 Fingerboarding is a good match for videography as the action can be controlled and framing the activity offers opportunities for creativity. With the rise of the online video business from early 2006, fueled, in part, because the feature that allows e-mailing clips to friends, several thousand finger board and handboard videos can now be found on popular video-sharing sites such as YouTube. Thus even if the weather does not permit a skateboarder to practice outside they could try a potential trick with their scaled-down fingerboard and related items and share the video with whomever they wished. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Fingerboard (skateboard)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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