The Origins Of Inline Skating

The first inline skate model was developed in the early 1700s by a Dutchman who wanted to simulate ice skating in the summer by nailing wooden spools to strips of wood & attaching them to his shoes.

The next version appeared in 1760 when a London instrument maker, Joseph Merlin, decided to make an entrance to a masquerade party by skating in on metal wheeled boots while playing a violin. He ended up skating into a huge mirror at the end of the ballroom, not having learned to stop or steer.

In 1823, Robert John Tyers of London designed a skate called a "rolito" by placing five wheels in a row on the bottom of a shoe. The rolito was not take seriously at the time.

In 1863, an American, James Plimpton, found a way to make a workable skate. He came up with a four-wheel skate with two pairs of wheels side by side & so the modern four wheel roller skate was created. Roller skates allowed turns & also forwards & backwards skating. The invention of ball bearing wheels in 1884 helped the sport even more.

Tyers' design did not go entirely unnoticed however. In the Netherlands, after the canals had melted, "skeelers" (5's) were used as a means of dry land cross training, competition & transportation for over two decades.

Finally, in 1980 when two brothers from Minneapolis were rummaging through a pile of equipment at a sporting goods store, they found an old inline skate. Scott & Brennan Olson were ice hockey players & so they realised the cross-training potential of the inline skate. They redesigned the skate, using a hockey boot, polyurethane wheels & adding a rubber heel brake & found they could skate as they did on ice. Soon after, they began selling skates out of their home & eventually Rollerblade Inc. was born.

There were also some Soviet inlines from around the same time. These inlines were being developed for Speed Skating dry land training. Besides having inferior wheel material, they only had a single bearing cartridge in each wheel.

The first mass produced Rollerblade skates had two-part metal runners. The smaller skates had more overlap between the two metal parts; the large skates had less. The "bushings" were 4 plain vanilla washers per wheel; they were cumbersome to assemble/remove & mechanically flawed: dirt/sand would get between the inner washer & the bearing. Also, there was just a washer's worth of clearance between the rail & the wheel: it was very easy to trash a wheel by rubbing it against a rail. The holes along the side of the runners were oval; the rock of the skate was determined by how much you slid the bolt up or down when you tightened it. Finally, the brakes were old roller skate toe stops,  they were not very efficient.

The first massively successful Rollerblade skate was the Lightning. It had a robust fibreglass runner for each size of skate. The bushings fit into oval holes in the runners - rock was set by whether you put the bushing in up or down. The linkage between the wheel & runner was far more mechanically efficient & there was no way to rub wheels on the runners. Wheel removal/insertion was far easier. Rollerblade's brake, while far smaller than the old "toe stop" brake, was much more efficient & lasted longer.

What is Rollerblading?

All Rollerblades are inline skates, but not all inline skates are Rollerblades. Rollerblade is a registered trademark of Rollerblade, Inc., but, like many groundbreaking products, the trade name has become synonymous with the type of product. Other examples of this include Q-Tip, Kleenex, Band-Aid, Frisbee, & Jacuzzi. You do not go Cadillacking, neither do you go blading. Just like Calvin said, "Verbing weirds language." "Rollerblading" is not a word, although some people continue to use it. Even the people who work at Rollerblade call it skating.