Roller skates facts for kids
Roller skates are special shoes or frames that attach to your shoes. They have wheels on the bottom, letting you roll around! The very first roller skates looked a lot like ice skates, but with wheels instead of a blade. Later, the "quad skate" became popular. This type has four wheels, set up like the wheels on a car.
Roller skating is a fun hobby, a competitive sport, and even a way to travel from one place to another using roller skates.
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The Story of Roller Skates
The first time someone used wheeled skates was on a stage in London in 1743. But the very first "roller skate" to get a patent (a special right for an invention) was made in 1760. It was invented by John Joseph Merlin from Belgium. His skates were tricky to steer and hard to stop because they didn't have brakes. So, they didn't become very popular right away. Merlin showed off his invention at a party, where he skated while playing the violin!
In the 1840s, an opera called Le prophète had a scene where performers used roller skates. They pretended to be ice skating on a frozen lake on stage. People who watched this opera were amazed, and roller skating started to become a new, exciting activity across Europe. As ice skaters learned how to do fancy moves, roller skaters wanted to be able to turn and spin in a similar way.
In 1863, James Plimpton from Massachusetts invented a much better skate. It was called the "rocking" skate. This skate had four wheels for good balance. It also had special axles that let you turn by leaning to one side. This was a huge improvement! It made roller skating much easier and led to a massive boom in its popularity. This period was even called "rinkomania" in the 1860s and 1870s. Roller skating spread all over the world and stayed popular until the 1930s. Plimpton's skate design is still used today.
Roller Skating as a Sport
Over time, roller skating became more than just a fun pastime; it grew into a competitive sport. There's speed skating, where people race on skates. There's also inline figure skating, which is very much like the figure skating you see in the Olympics on ice.
In the mid-1990s, roller hockey became super popular. This game is played with a ball instead of a puck. It was so popular that it was even part of the Olympics in 1992! A study in 1999 showed that 2.5 million people played roller hockey. Roller skating was considered for the 2012 Summer Olympics but has not yet become an Olympic event. Other roller skating sports include jam skating and roller derby.
Roller Skating's Popularity
Roller skating first became popular in the late 1950s and 1960s at rock 'n' roll dance halls. But it really exploded during the disco and new wave music eras of the 1970s and 1980s. It became a famous symbol of that time. Its popularity started to slow down in the early 1990s.
However, roller skating saw a big comeback in the late 2010s and early 2020s. This was partly thanks to many viral videos on the app TikTok. Also, people enjoyed the return of 1970s and 1980s pop culture from movies and TV shows. Many popular skate brands sold out completely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lots of people started roller skating as a safe outdoor activity during quarantines around the world.
Roller Skating Organizations
The Roller Skating Rink Operators Association was created in the U.S. in 1937. Today, it's called the Roller Skating Association. This group helps promote roller skating and offers classes to people. Their goal is to teach everyone about roller skating. Its current president is Bobby Pender, and the main office is in Indianapolis.
Health Benefits of Skating
The Roller Skating Association's website lists many health benefits of roller skating. Here are some of them:
- It gives you a full aerobic workout, which is great for your heart and lungs.
- You can burn about 330 calories per hour if you skate at 6 miles per hour (for a 143-pound person). If you skate at 10 miles per hour, you could burn 600 calories!
- A study found that inline skating puts less than half the stress on your joints compared to running.
- Roller skating offers similar health benefits to jogging.
- The American Heart Association suggests roller skating as a good aerobic fitness sport.
Gallery
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An advertisement for an early 20th-century model which fit over regular shoes
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Young woman roller skating beside a group of women's suffragists at the White House, 1917
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Girl on roller skates, 1921
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Roller skates of a design common in the 1960s
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Skates at Paul Bunyan Land, Brainerd, Minnesota
See also
In Spanish: Patín sobre ruedas para niños
- Ice skates
- Inline skates
- Rollerblade – a popular brand of inline skates
- Roller shoe
- Roller skating
