page_title: Wave pool
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Wave pool / History
caption_attribution_description: Magyar: Gellért Gyógyfürdő, hullám medence. Location: Hungary, Budapest XI. Tags: pool, swimming pool, Budapest Title: Gellért Gyógyfürdő, hullám medence.
context_page_description: A wave pool is a swimming pool in which there are artificially generated, reasonably large waves, similar to those of the ocean. Wave pools are often a major feature of water parks, both indoors and outdoors, as well as some leisure centres.
context_section_description: The origins of wave pools go as far back as the 19th century, as famous fantasy castle builder Ludwig II of Bavaria electrified a lake to create breaking waves.
  In 1905, the "Undosa" swimming platform was built on Lake Starnberg in Germany, which used large pontoons to force the lake water to make waves. It has since been converted into a restaurant.
  In 1912, the "Bilzbad" in Radebeul, Germany was the first public wave pool built on the ground. It used a wave machine, also called "Undosa," first exhibited the previous year at the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden. It still operates.
  Another early public wave pool was designed and built in 1927 in Budapest, Hungary in the known Gellért Baths, and appeared one of James A. Fitzpatrick's documentary Traveltalks films about the city in 1938, as one of the main tourist attractions. It remains open.
  The natatorium at Bayocean, Oregon also had an early wave-generating machine, before it was destroyed by natural ocean waves in 1932.
  In 1929, a Pathe Pictorial there is film of "Indoor Surfers" frolicking in small, artificially-generated waves in a swimming pool in Munch, Germany.
  The waves were created by agitators which pushed waves through the diving area and into a shallow area - where kids were bodysurfing little waves: "This is the new kind of swimming bath that is becoming the rage of Germany," one of the captions reads. "No more placid waters for bathers - the mechanism behind the netting keeps everything moving."
  In 1939, a public swimming pool in Wembley, London, was equipped with machines that created wavelets to approximate the soothing ebb and flowing motion of the ocean. In the 1940s, Palisades Amusement Park, located on the Hudson River Palisades across from New York City, installed a large waterfall at one end of its salt water pool, the largest of such in the world at the time, which generated small waves much like those in Wembley.
  In 1966, Akiruno, Japan's "Summerland Wavepool", nicknamed the "Surf-a-Torium", was the first wave pool accessible to surfers (though only for 15 minutes every hour).
  Several locations claim to have developed the first wave pool in the United States, including Big Surf in Tempe, Arizona and Point Mallard Park in Decatur, Alabama, which both opened in 1969. The first indoor wave pool in the United States opened in 1982 at the Bolingbrook Aquatic Center in Bolingbrook, Illinois.
  In or around 2018 many wave pools opened. The most famous is Kelly Slater's wave pool in California. 
  Previous claims that Wave pools use fossil fuel and are bad for the environment are not completely accurate. Point Mallard Park Wave pool in Decatur Alabama receives its power from TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) via Decatur Utilities, which for this location power is generated via Nuclear Reactor at Browns Ferry and Wheeler Dam Hydroelectric plant.
caption: A 1936 photo of the wave pool, constructed six years prior at Gellért Baths in Budapest
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