 Throughout the first half of the 20th century nearly all modern surfboads were longboards, generally 9 feet or longer, although after the 1930s they began to shift away from being solid dense wood and shifted to lighter materials like balsa wood and eventually various forms of polystyrene, which still dominate to this day.Throughout the decades shapers had occasionally made smaller boards, often as novelties, experiments, or specifically designed for small-statured people, but the popularity of those designs was slow to rise.During the surfboard production boom of the 1960s the predominantly male shapers would sometimes construct specifically smaller boards for girls (who are often lighter and shorter, affecting weight/length requirements for paddling).