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Roller skates are boots with wheels mounted to the bottom, allowing the user to travel on hard surfaces similarly to an
ice skate Ice skates are metal blades attached underfoot and used to propel the bearer across a sheet of ice while ice skating. The first ice skates were made from leg bones of horse, ox or deer, and were attached to feet with leather straps. These skates ...
r on ice. The first roller skate was an inline skate design, effectively an
ice skate Ice skates are metal blades attached underfoot and used to propel the bearer across a sheet of ice while ice skating. The first ice skates were made from leg bones of horse, ox or deer, and were attached to feet with leather straps. These skates ...
with a line of wheels replacing the blade. In modern usage, the term typically refers to skates with two pairs of wheels on shared axles like those of
skateboard A skateboard is a type of sports equipment used for skateboarding. It is usually made of a specially designed 7–8-ply maple plywood deck and has polyurethane wheels attached to the underside by a pair of skateboarding trucks. The skateboard ...
s (early versions of which were made using roller skate parts). Skates with this configuration are also known as "quad skates" or "quads" and, like skateboards, steer by tilting the skate to one side, which causes the axles to turn inward.


History

While the first reported use of wheeled skates was on a London stage in 1743, the first
patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...
ed "roller skate" was introduced in 1760 by Belgian inventor John Joseph Merlin. They were hard to steer and stopping was difficult due to the fact that they did not have any type of braking mechanism and as such they failed to gain popularity. Merlin demonstrated his invention during a party in the city of Huy, during which he skated while playing the
violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...
. In the 1840s, Meyerbeer's opera ''
Le prophète ''Le prophète'' (''The Prophet'') is a grand opera in five acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer, which was premiered in Paris on 16 April 1849. The French-language libretto was by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps, after passages from the ''Essay on the ...
'' featured a scene in which performers used roller-skates to simulate ice-skating on a frozen lake set on stage. This exposure had an impact on audiences and led to the rise of roller skating as a new and popular activity throughout the Continent. As ice skaters subsequently developed the art of figure skating, roller skaters wanted the ability to turn in their skates in a similar fashion. In 1863, James Plimpton from Massachusetts invented the "rocking" skate and used a four-wheel configuration for stability, and independent axles that turned by pressing to one side of the skate or the other when the skater wants to create an edge. This was a vast improvement on the Merlin design, one that was easier to use and drove the huge popularity of
roller skating Roller skating is the act of travelling on surfaces with roller skates. It is a recreation, recreational activity, a sport, and a form of transportation. Roller rinks and skate parks are built for roller skating, though it also takes place on s ...
, dubbed "rinkomania" in the 1860s and 1870s, which spread to Europe and around the world, and continued through the 1930s. Eventually, roller skating evolved from just a pastime to a competitive
sport Sport is a physical activity or game, often Competition, competitive and organization, organized, that maintains or improves physical ability and skills. Sport may provide enjoyment to participants and entertainment to spectators. The numbe ...
;
speed skating Speed skating is a competitive form of ice skating in which the competitors race each other in travelling a certain distance on skates. Types of speed skating are long-track speed skating, short-track speed skating, and marathon speed skat ...
, racing on skates, and
artistic roller skating Artistic roller skating is a competitive sport similar to figure skating but where competitors wear roller skates instead of ice skates. Within artistic roller skating, there are several disciplines: * Figures: the individual follows the figu ...
, equivalent to
figure skating Figure skating is a sport in which individuals, pairs, or groups perform on figure skates on ice. It was the first winter sport to be included in the Olympic Games, with its introduction occurring at the Figure skating at the 1908 Summer Olympi ...
on ice. In the mid 1990s
roller hockey Roller hockey is a form of hockey played on a dry surface using wheeled skates. It can be played with traditional roller skates (quad skates) or with inline skates and use either a ball or puck. Combined, roller hockey is played in nearly 60 cou ...
, played with a ball rather than a puck, became so popular that it even made an appearance in the
Olympics The modern Olympic Games (Olympics; ) are the world's preeminent international sporting events. They feature summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a variety of competit ...
in 1992. The National Sporting Goods Association statistics showed, from a 1999 study, that 2.5 million people played roller hockey. Roller skating was considered for the 2012 Summer Olympics but has never become an Olympic event. Other roller skating sports include jam skating and
roller derby Roller derby is a roller skating contact sport played on an oval track by two teams of five skaters. It is played by approximately 1,250 amateur leaguesA Roller Derby league is synonymous with an individual club or team in other team sports, as ...
. Roller skating popularity began during the late 1950s and 1960s at
rock 'n' roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and rock 'n' roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African ...
teen dance halls, but exploded and took off in the 1970s and 1980s due to the introduction of large rubberized polymer wheels such as Krypto-Pro, to replace metal wheels, becoming popular and an iconic thing of that time. In the early 1990s it would begin to diminish in popularity. Sales of roller skates increased during the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
as people sought safe outdoor activities. Roller skating saw a revival in the late 2010s and early 2020s, spurred on by a number of viral videos on the popular video-sharing app
TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...
and also a revival of
1970s File:1970s decade montage.jpg, Clockwise from top left: U.S. President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office following the Watergate scandal in 1974; The United States was still involved in the Vietnam War ...
and
1980s File:1980s replacement montage02.PNG, 335px, From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, ''Space Shuttle Columbia, Columbia'', lifts off in 1981; US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union, Soviet General Secretary of the Communist Party of ...
pop culture from film and TV nostalgia. Many popular brands sold out to the point of back-order, with many people taking up the hobby during COVID-19 quarantines across the globe.


Parts

A roller skate has two main parts: the boot and the plate, which is the part that holds the wheels and provides the ability to steer. There are two main categories of roller skate boots: a high-top boot with a raised heel similar to an ice figure skating boot, and a flat-soled boot cut at or below the ankle. The plate is bolted to the boot, typically by drilling holes through the sole of the boot to match existing holes in the plates and placing bolts with low-profile heads inside the boots with nuts on the outside facing the floor. For boots with a raised heel, screws can be driven into the heel directly. Roller skate plates are composed of several parts: the base structural component is also called the plate, and the trucks, which are the main steering components, are attached to it in a way that allows the trucks to steer when the plate is tilted. Almost all roller skate plates achieve this by sandwiching each truck between a pair of flexible
cylindrical A cylinder () has traditionally been a Solid geometry, three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a Prism (geometry), prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may ...
"cushions" or bushings so that it can tilt. The stack is held together by a "kingpin" that passes through the center of the stack and is used to adjust the compression applied to the cushions. The "traditional" kingpin is a bolt that threads into the plate and is secured by a jam nut against the plate. Most modern plates use a "flipped" kingpin instead, which is a threaded stud attached to the plate and allows preload adjustments using a locking nut. To prevent the truck from rotating around the kingpin, an additional protrusion from the truck called a "pivot pin" sits in a cup on the plate.


Organizations

The Roller Skating Rink Operators Association was developed in the U.S. in 1937. It is currently named the Roller Skating Association. The association promotes roller skating and offers classes to the public, aiming to educate the population about roller skating. Its current president is Bobby Pender and the associations headquarters are located in
Indianapolis Indianapolis ( ), colloquially known as Indy, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Indiana, most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana, Marion ...
.


Gallery

File:Punch (1841) (14596262647).jpg, ''The General adoption of the rolling skate - Lively appearance of Regent street in june'', a cartoon by
George du Maurier George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier (6 March 1834 – 8 October 1896) was a Franco-British cartoonist and writer known for work in ''Punch (magazine), Punch'' and a Gothic fiction, Gothic novel ''Trilby (novel), Trilby'', featuring the char ...
published by Punch in 1866 Image:1908-PatinsRoulettes.jpg, An advertisement for an early 20th-century model which fit over regular shoes Image:WOMAN SUFFRAGE PICKETS AT WHITE HOUSE 07351v.jpg, Young woman roller skating beside a group of women's
suffragist Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to vo ...
s at the White House, 1917 Image:BayStLouisRollerskates1921crop.jpg, Girl on roller skates, 1921 File:Old roller skates.jpg, Roller skates of a design common in the 1960s Image:Skates.jpg, Skates at Paul Bunyan Land,
Brainerd, Minnesota Brainerd ( ) is a city and the county seat of Crow Wing County, Minnesota, United States. Its population was 14,395 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Brainerd straddles the Mississippi River several miles upstream from its confluen ...


Health benefits

The Roller Skating Association's web page offers some health benefits of roller skating. Some of the benefits they list include: * Providing a complete aerobic workout * Burning per hour while skating for a person or while skating . * A study from the University of Massachusetts found that in-line skating causes less than 50% of the impact shock to joints compared to running. * Roller skating is equivalent to jogging in terms of health benefits * The
American Heart Association The American Heart Association (AHA) is a nonprofit organization in the United States that funds cardiovascular medical research, educates consumers on healthy living and fosters appropriate Heart, cardiac care in an effort to reduce disability ...
recommends roller skating as an aerobic fitness sport.


See also

*
Ice skates Ice skates are metal blades attached underfoot and used to propel the bearer across a sheet of ice while ice skating. The first ice skates were made from leg bones of horse, ox or deer, and were attached to feet with leather straps. These skates ...
*
Inline skates Inline skates are boots with wheels arranged in a single line from front to back, allowing one to move in an ice skate-like fashion. Inline skates are technically a type of roller skates, roller skate, but most people associate the term rolle ...
* Rollerblade, a popular brand of inline skates * Roller shoe *
Roller skating Roller skating is the act of travelling on surfaces with roller skates. It is a recreation, recreational activity, a sport, and a form of transportation. Roller rinks and skate parks are built for roller skating, though it also takes place on s ...


References


External links


"How Rink Rollers Are Made", by George W. Waltz
– November 1951 article in ''
Popular Science Popular science (also called pop-science or popsci) is an interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is more broad ranging. It may be written ...
'' on how roller skates are manufactured
History of Roller Skating in Canada

homepage for USA Roller Sports

Roller Skating Museum
{{Authority control Belgian inventions Sports footwear Roller skating equipment Land vehicles Wheeled vehicles 1970s fads and trends 2020s fads and trends