A lot of things can hover. There are helicopters. There are hovercraft. But for the last three decades, a generation of engineers and movie fans have been waiting for something else: a hovering skateboard like the one in “Back to the Future Part II.”
The movie had other futuristic items, like flying cars and self-tying shoes, but none touched the imagination as much as Marty McFly’s hoverboard, Conor Dougherty reports. For the last 25 years, garage tinkerers, physics professors and top engineers at Google have been trying to make one.
Inside a drab office park in Northern California, Greg and Jill Henderson are working on the latest effort. On a recent visit the couple allowed a reporter to stand atop a noisy magnetic skateboard that can float an inch above a copper surface.
The Hendersons have poured their life savings into hover technology and are hoping to create new industries based on this science. Read more »