The sport of snowboarding was invented by a Michigan man named Sherman Poppen, but the person who transformed it from a quirky little activity on snow into a major winter sports activity and an Olympic sport was Jake Burton Carpenter. In the process, he may just have saved the winter sports industry by bringing teenagers back to slopes that were mostly populated by geriatric skiers in the 1990s. Jake Burton Carpenter, founder of Burton Snowboards, died Nov. 20 from a recurrence of cancer at the age of 65. Carpenter was a skier who started experimenting with a plywood platform called ... Log in to view full article.