North Sails was founded in 1957 by
Lowell North, in
San Diego,
California. An
engineer by training, North applied a rigorous, methodical approach to designing sails, with the goal of building sails that were faster than the competition’s. North began testing the strength and stretch characteristics of
sailcloth he received from his suppliers, to eliminate variability in his raw materials. He introduced computer-driven
cloth cutting machines, to increase the consistency and repeatability of a sail design. North was a pioneer in
computer modelling of sail forces and structural loads. North used a laminated
Mylar and
Dacron sail on the
12-metre Enterprise in 1977. North’s emphasis on computer technologies and new materials is reflected in the company today, which makes intensive use of
computer assisted design and specialised
finite element analysis (FEA) and
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, and which has introduced a number of innovations in materials and manufacturing processes. In the 1960s and 1970s, North recruited expert sailors to help expand his business. Among his employees were such Olympic and international sailing champions as
Hans Fogh,
Peter Barrett,
John Marshall,
Tom Blackaller,
Iain Macdonald-Smith and
Robbie Haines. North sold the company to
Terry Kohler in 1984. ==Technology==