For people who don't know what foil surfing is, watch this video to get some concept
More than a century has passed since the birth of the first hydrofoil.
In 1869, French scientist Emmanuel Denis Farco got his patent issued by British government, where he mentioned some kind of hydro foils attaching to ships.
In 1905, An Italian engineer named Enrico Forlanini began working on hydro foils and received patents for his invention in both UK and USA.
In 1908, Scottish scientist Alexander Graham Bell (yeah the guy invented telephone), with his coworker Casey Baldwin, start to work on different types of hydro foil designs. They succeed in building several prototypes, but their work did not gain popularity due to negligible low carrying capacity, low seaworthiness and lack of reliability.
Then in the next 5 decades, scientists and engineers from Europe and America continued to work on relevant projects.
The major breakthrough came around the 60s, after which combat and pleasure hydro foil boats were mass-produced. Foils began to be fastened to ships, yachts and boats.
With the popularity increase and the advancement of technology, more companies begin to produce foils and put more money into R&D, nowadays foils have become more user-friendly (lighter, faster, etc.).