History Of Rollerskating

History Of Rollerskating

These days, you simply go to the skating center, put wheels on your feet and you are ready for fun, fun, fun.

The first recorded use of rollerskates was in a London stage performance in 1743. The inventor of this rollerskate is lost to history. The first recorded rollerskate inventor was Jean-Joseph Merlin, who demonstrated a primitive inline skate with metal wheels in 1760. The first patented rollerskate design was patented in France by M. Petitbled, in 1819. These early rollerskates were similar to todays inline skates, but they were not very maneuverable; it was very difficult with these rollerskates to do anything but move in a straight line and perhaps make wide sweeping turns. During the rest of the 19th century, inventors continued to work on improving rollerskate design.

The four-wheeled turning rollerskates, or quad skates, with four wheels set in two side-by-side pairs, was first designed in 1863 in New York City by James Leonard Plimpton in an attempt to improve upon previous designs. The skate contained a pivoting action using a rubber cushion, and this allowed the roller skater to skate a curve just by leaning to one side. It was a huge success, so much so that the first public roller skating rink was opened in 1866 in Newport, Rhode Island with the support of Plimpton. The design of the quad skates allowed easier turns and maneuverability, and the quad skates came to dominate the industry for more than a century.

Within 20 years, roller skating had become a popular pastime for men and women. Roller skating contests began to increase. Indoors, wealthy gentlemen in Newport, Rhode Island, played "roller polo," a roller hockey game. Others held contests in dance and figure skating. Outdoors, men and women were racing in speed contests. The more the public saw of roller skating, the more they wanted to try it themselves. Roller skating was soon enjoying its first boom.

Arguably, the most important advance in the realistic use of rollerskates as a pleasurable pastime took place in Birmingham, England in 1876 when William Bown patented a design for the wheels of rollerskates. Bown's design embodied his effort to keep the two bearing surfaces of an axle, fixed and moving, apart. Bown worked closely with Joseph Henry Hughes, who drew up the patent for a ball or roller bearing race for bicycle and carriage wheels in 1877. Hughes' patent included all the elements of an adjustable system. These two men are thus responsible for modern day rollerskates and skateboard wheels, as well as the ball bearing race inclusion in velocipedes—later to become motorbikes and automobiles.

Another improvement came in 1876, when the toe stop was first patented. This provided rollerskaters with the ability to stop promptly upon tipping the skate onto the toe. Toe stops are still used today on most quad skates and on some typed of inline skates.

Rollerskates were being mass produced in America as early as the 1880's, the sport's first of several boom periods. Micajah C. Henley of Richmond, Indiana produced thousands of rollerskates every week during peak sales. Henley skates were the first rollerskates with adjustable tension via a screw, the ancestor of the kingbolt mechanism on modern quad skates.

An advert for an early 20th century model which fit over regular shoes.

In 1884 Levant M. Richardson received a patent for the use of steel ball bearings in skate wheels so as to reduce friction. This also allowed rollerskaters to increase speed with minimum effort. In 1898, Richardson started the Richardson Ball Bearing and Skate Company, which provided skates to most professional skate racers of the time, including Harley Davidson (no relation to the Harley-Davidson motorcycle brand).

The design to the quad skates has remained essentially unchanged since then, and in fact remained as the dominant roller skate design until nearly the end of the 20th century. The quad skate has begun to make a comeback recently due to the popularity of roller derby and jam skating.

Just before World War II, in 1937, a group of skating rink owners (one from Massachusetts: Fred Freeman) formed an association to promote roller skating and establish good business practices for skating rinks. The association is now almost 50 years old: The Roller Skating Rink Operators Association (RSROA).

The Skateland building owner, George Pyche, has been a Vice President of that association. George was Chairman of the New England Chapter of the RSROA for about 10 years and was Chairman of the Northeast Region Chapter of the RSROA for a few years. Mary Pyche was Vice President of the New England Chapter of the RSROA for one year and Secretary for 12 years. Mary was also Secretary of the Northeast Region Chapter.

The RSROA group is now known as the Roller Skating Association (RSA). Under the guidance of the RSROA, roller skating enjoyed steady growth through the 1940's, '50s and '60s. It became known as a family activity that was good for everyone, an identity that it still has today.

Five years later, but more than 100 years after Plimpton's invention, the RSROA helped establish National Roller Skating Week, so everyone could celebrate and fun and fitness of today's roller skating.

George and Mary Pyche, in 19??, while officers of the New England Chapter of the RSROA, received the proclaimation from Governor Sargeant of Massachusetts for "Roller Skating Week in Massachusetts"--(second week of September???).

In the 1970's, there was a big improvement in roller skating. Roller Skating floors became easier to care for because of plastic coatings. Plastic skate wheels for smoother, easier, safer skating became the standard. And, the music and lighting at roller skating centers was modernized. When roller skaters discovered how easy it was to skate outdoors with the new wheels, another big roller skating boom was on the way (sneaker skates and skateboards). By 1977, everyone was suddenly roller skating to disco music.

In 1979 Scott Olsen and Brennan Olsen of Minneapolis, Minnesota came across a pair of inline skates created in the 1960's by the Chicago Roller Skate Company and, seeing the potential for off-ice hockey training, set about redesigning the rollerskates using modern materials and attaching ice hockey boots. A few years later Scott Olson began heavily promoting the inline skates and launched the company Rollerblade, Inc. During the late 1980's and early 1990's, the Rollerblade-branded inline skates became so successful that they inspired many other companies to create similar inline skates, and the inline design became more popular than the traditional quads. The Rollerblade skates became synonymous in the minds of many with "inline skates" and skating, so much so that many people came to call any form of skating "Rollerblading," thus becoming a genericized trademark.

For much of the 1980's and into the 1990's, inline skate models typically sold for general public use employed a hard plastic boot, similar to ski boots. In or about 1995 "soft boot" designs were introduced to the market, primarily by the sporting goods firm K2 Inc., and promoted for use as fitness skates. Other companies quickly followed, and by the early 2000's the use of hard shell skates became primarily limited to the aggressive skating discipline.

With the emergence of a new style of rollerskating in the later 1990's called jamskating and the re-birth and surge in popularity of rollerderby rollerskating has come back strong and threatens to usurp the inline skate industry.

Roller skating is easy, inexpensive entertainment, so people of all ages make it a habit to meet friends, make new ones, develop social skills, play games and enjoy the music at their nearest roller skating center.

Roller Skating is Enjoyment!!! Rock, Bounce, Skate, Roll and Have Fun!!!!

Much Luv,

Geoffrey Kelly - Website Administrator