roller-skating, recreational and competitive sport in which the participants use special shoes fitted with small wheels to move about on 📉 rinks or paved surfaces.
Roller-skating sports include speed skating, hockey, figure skating, and dancing competitions similar to the ice-skating sports, as 📉 well as the vertical and street-style competitions common to so-called extreme sports.
Development of the roller skate The invention of roller 📉 skates has been traditionally credited to a Belgian, Joseph Merlin, in the 1760s, although there are many reports of wheels 📉 attached to ice skates and shoes in the early years of that century.
Early models were derived from the ice skate 📉 and typically had an "in-line" arrangement of wheels (the wheels formed a single straight line along the bottom of the 📉 skate).In 1819 M.
Petibled of Paris received the first patent for a roller skate.
Like previous models, Petibled's skate had an in-line 📉 wheel arrangement, using three wooden or metal wheels.
The wheels were connected to a wooden block that in turn could be 📉 strapped to a boot.
These early roller skates enjoyed limited popularity.
The ride was rough, and stopping and turning were nearly impossible.
Britannica 📉 Quiz American Sports Nicknames Victorian couples roller-skating through a park, illustration by George du Maurier, 1876.
The first practical roller skate 📉 was designed in 1863 by James Plimpton of Medford, Massachusetts, who broke from the in-line construction and used two parallel 📉 pairs of wheels, one set near the heel of the boot and the other near the front.
He attached the wheel 📉 pairs to the boot using springy carriages known as trucks.
This construction was first known as the "rocking" skate (and is 📉 now known as a "quad") because it allowed the skater to easily shift on the skates in order to smoothly 📉 navigate turns and perform other maneuvers.
Thereafter the first great recreational roller-skating craze swept the United States and western Europe, where 📉 rinks were built in both small towns and large cities.
At the turn of the 20th century, rinks constructed in the 📉 Chicago Coliseum and New York City's Madison Square Garden attracted thousands of customers on their opening nights.
The quad style of 📉 skate became the most popular skate for the next 80 years.
Plimpton's quad skates were soon followed by other technological improvements.
In 📉 the 1880s ball bearings were added to the wheel construction, allowing for a smoother ride.
Toe stops for braking were introduced 📉 as early as the 1850s; however, the large rubber toe stop for quad skates was not widely used until the 📉 1950s.
Heel stops were introduced with some of the earliest roller skates but were perfected only with the re-emergence of in-line 📉 skates in the 1980s.
In the 1960s the wooden or metal wheels traditionally used in skates gave way to lightweight polyurethane 📉 plastic wheels that gripped the riding surface better.
In the 1980s roller-skating enjoyed renewed popularity with the creation of a new 📉 generation of in-line roller skates by hockey-playing brothers Scott and Brennan Olson, the founders of Rollerblade, Inc.
They developed in-line skates 📉 with four wheels that extended the full length of the boot, giving the skater greater maneuverability (compared with previous in-line 📉 skates) and much more speed.
The company also introduced lightweight plastics and other materials to the boot construction, as well as 📉 buckles that allowed for easy adjustments to the fit and comfort of the skate.
Roller sports New sports incorporating roller skates 📉 emerged soon after the introduction of the quad skate in 1863.
The first recorded game of roller hockey took place in 📉 London in 1878.
Speed roller-skating events began in the 1890s and were popular through the first quarter of the 20th century.
Major 📉 speed roller-skating events for men, women, and relay teams involve racing counterclockwise around an oval track or on the open 📉 road.
The rules and techniques for these competitions are much like those established for ice skating.
Dancing and figure skating on roller 📉 skates were introduced in 1910 and 1923, respectively; systems for judging competitions and for proficiency tests are similar to those 📉 used in ice skating.
International competition in artistic and speed roller-skating and in roller hockey is governed by the International Federation 📉 of Roller Sports, founded in 1924.
The first world championships were held in 1937.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access 📉 to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now Roller Derby was one of the first roller sports to succeed on the professional level.
The sport 📉 originated in Chicago in 1935 as an endurance competition between male-female couples.
The teams would circle a banked rink for 57,000 📉 laps, a total distance that was said to equal a trip across the United States.
A few years later Roller Derby 📉 was restructured as a contact sport with two teams, each consisting of five men and five women.
The men would compete 📉 against the men and the women versus the women, in alternating periods.
A designated skater for each side would try to 📉 pass as many members of the opposite team as possible during the period, while teammates would work to block or 📉 slow the opposing team.
Audiences responded to the speed, violence, and theatricality of the sport (feuds were often scripted), and the 📉 spectacle was hugely popular during the 1940s and '50s.
Leagues thrived in Canada, Japan, and Puerto Rico.
Professional Roller Derby collapsed in 📉 the 1970s, and attempts to revive it were unsuccessful until the early 21st century.
The resurgence occurred primarily in the United 📉 States and comprised both professional and amateur teams.
The arrival of a new generation of in-line skates in the 1980s had 📉 a major impact on roller sports.
The improved in-line skates were quickly adopted by speed skaters and also inspired a new 📉 variety of roller hockey.
The original form of roller hockey, also known as hardball roller hockey, is played with quad skates, 📉 a small hard ball, and curved sticks similar to those used in field hockey, and the sport's rules are derived 📉 largely from polo.
In-line roller hockey uses a puck, sticks, and many of the rules of ice hockey.
In-line skaters also embraced 📉 competitions commonly associated with skateboarding.
These sports, sometimes called aggressive roller-skating, include street style, which involves riding through urban environments and 📉 performing tricks off stairs, rails, and other structures, and vertical style, which involves aerial acrobatics performed off ramps or in 📉 a half-pipe (a U-shaped skating structure).
