(WYTV) — Who first thought of the idea of putting tiny wheels on the bottoms of our shoes and going roller skating?
Check with the National Museum of Roller Skating in Lincoln, Nebraska. An Englishman, John Merlin, first tried it in the 1760s in London but never perfected skating.
A Frenchman tried tying a platform with wheels to show bottoms in 1819 — it looked more like our inline skates today.
But skating took off with Leonard Plimpton of New York in 1863: rubber wheels, two in front, two in the rear on a frame you attached to your shoes with leather straps. He ran a New York City furniture store and used one floor as a skating rink.
Soon, roller rinks began opening across the country. In the 1950s and 60s, we had carhops on skates delivering food to customers in the parking lots — the restaurant chain Sonic still does this and has a skate-off among all 3,500 restaurants every year.
Skating was probably most popular in the 1970s: who can forget Patrick Swayze’s acting debut in Skatetown, USA?
Then two brothers, Scott and Brennan Olsen, put the wheels back in one line on ice hockey boots and trademarked the name of their invention: the Rollerblade.
