Roller Skates
Today, roller skates. The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
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The mid twentieth century was a golden age for roller skating. The little girls in my childhood all seemed adept at it. That popularity has dwindled in our twenty-first century. Sidewalks and streets were less crowded back then. And playing with neighborhood kids was central in our lives. Of course roller skating is still with us today – but nothing like then.
So let’s see how it all began: The first known roller skate inventor was one John Joseph Merlin, born in Belgium in 1735. Some crude precursors may’ve existed. But he’s clearly documented. Merlin moved to England as a young man, and set up shop doing all kinds of strange mechanics.
John Joseph Merlin
His inventive output was stunning: A clock powered by fluctuations of atmospheric pressure, musical instruments, automata, prosthetics for the lame ... And roller skates. They lacked all of today’s niceties, of course. No means for braking. And they possibly had only two wheels on each skate. Still he showed up at a party, rolling about while he played a violin. Well, until he crashed into a mirror, damaging both his violin and himself.
But James Plimpton of Massachusetts invented his “rocking skate” as he called it, in 1863. It now had four wheels on each skate. Each axle pivoted – a feature that accommodated turns. Roller skating could now take off as a popular sport.
Plimpton Roller skate with pivoting axel
I wonder if Plimpton had encountered the public reaction to a Meyerbeer opera fourteen years earlier. It’d been a huge production in Paris – one that had dancers ice-skating. Of course they had, in fact, been using another early form of a roller skate on a stage floor. The production had built over a thousand roller skates of their own devising. (Exactly the form, we’re unsure – probably four wheels.)
However, that’d left people fascinated with the idea of roller skating. Plimpton’s skate now made it feasible to join the fun. Roller skating took off like wildfire.
I won’t even try to catalog the many improvements since then. Those early skates attached to one’s footwear. And that was still the norm when I was a kid. Today’s skates generally include a shoe or boot in one unit with the skate. And they include a brake. Some use a pad protruding in front. Tip the skate forward and it touches the ground, slowing one down. Some skates attach the pad to the heel.
Modern roller skate with shoe and toe stop
You might find a parent today, teaching a young child how to begin skating in a driveway or a sidewalk. But serious roller skating is now a more organized kind of play – or should I say, sport. Cities have roller rinks – some, very elaborate. But: it’s all a far cry from those residential streets of my childhood.
I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.
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Some Sources:
John Joseph Merlin - Wikipedia
A Georgian Wizard | London Historians' Blog
John Joseph Merlin | The Engines of Our Ingenuity
James Leonard Plimpton - Wikipedia
All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
This Episode first aired on October 20, 2026.