Inline skates
Paris Friday Night Fever Skate (Randonnée du Vendredi Soir) is renowned for its large crowd size, as well as its iconic +10 mile urban routes.
[9] In 1760, John Joseph Merlin, a renowned clock-maker, musical-instrument maker and inventor from Belgium, experimented in London with "skaites" that "ran on wheels".
The four rollers (wheels) formed a straight line, and were mounted by pins on two side pieces of a hanger that we would now recognize as a frame of a modern-day inline skate.
[27][25] This is not dissimilar to how some modern-day hockey, freestyle and speed skates pitch a player leaning forward by default, giving a skater greater stability and stronger strokes.
[48] Across the Atlantic Ocean in America in 1904, Peck & Snyder Sporting Goods, which was acquired by A.G. Spalding & Brothers, advertised Racing Roller Skates with two wheels, each mounted with tempered steel ball bearings and supported by a rubber tire.
[54] In 1903, Benjamin S Peard filed a patent application on a wheel hub with spokes and fillets to reduce weight while still providing rigidity and strength.
By the end of the 1970s, only Chicago Roller-Blade and Super Sport Skate managed to gain limited adoption for training, within a niche community of ice hockey players.
[70][84][J] Wearing plastic Lange boots thus retrofitted, Scott and his friend Mark Lipson skated for 200 miles from Minneapolis to Grand Rapids, MN, in a five-day marketing campaign.
[85][86] Through tinkering, prototyping and road testing everywhere he could, Scott Olson eventually arrived at a design with an adjustable/expandable frame, polyurethane wheels and double ball bearings.
[88][L][M] In 1982, Scott Olson started to market his skates as a proper sport in itself, venturing out of the initial niche where they served as an off-season training tool for ice hockey.
[90][91] Scott also started to advertise his skates to the masses, in print and in person, as everyday fun activities, where one could "roll over large sidewalk craters without feeling them".
[70] Modern inline skates became practical for manufacturers to mass-produce, and enjoyable for the masses as a recreational sport, when technological advances such as polyurethane wheels, standard ISO ball bearings, and molded plastic boots arrived on the scene.
A proper closure system causes the "facing" (where eyelet tabs are) to push the instep against the heel pocket, preventing the foot from shifting or lifting during maneuvers.
[115] A properly-designed boot does not hinder the mobility of the ankle joint, allowing a skater to pivot the lower leg (the shin) forward, adopting a squatting (athletic) stance.
For instance, the Rollerblade Lightning TRS has been widely credited for enabling aggressive inline skating as a sport, with its durable boot and nylon-reinforced frame, suitable for skaters to perform grinds on street obstacles.
Often the recreational skates category also caters to cross-training needs, with even hardier boots and frames, plus a wider range of options for wheels, among other features.
Hockey boots are kept as low to the ground as possible, only allowing their frames to accommodate smallish wheels, in order to deliver the best stability for hard edging maneuvers.
[133] The rest of the boot is built around the quarter package, with a thick tongue to support the shin for an aggressive athletic stance, along with an reinforced toe cap.
The removal of shaft and cuff significantly reduces a boot's weight, a key advantage to a skater in a game where a saving of fractional seconds makes a difference.
As a skater leans their shin forward, the hinged cuff rotates to follow the lower leg while continuing to provide lateral ankle support.
Committed enthusiasts, however, generally avoid soft boots due to their lack of direct and immediate response to skating moves, which is caused by elastic hysteresis.
[150] For instance, in 2004, Easton Sports filed for a patent on an "unitary shell" made from fiber-reinforced resin, with sections of integrated walls arising from the sole.
The fitting issue can be mitigated by adding a layer of heat-moldable materials to the quarter package, such that a player can finish the final molding process of a boot at a skate shop or at home.
[150][159] Van Horne worked with Dave Cruikshank to file hockey skate patents in 2009 and 2011, on a composite shell and removable tongue / tendon guard.
For instance, aggressive skaters exclusively use fiberglass-reinforced plastic frames for their superior performance and consistent friction when grinding against all types of surfaces.
The ABEC standards were originally intended for high-speed machinery, not skating applications, and do not account for the quality of steel used, which is very important for how long bearings last.
Inline hockey players no less can customize their wheels to implement this setup (especially those who favor nimble change in direction over sheer speed during a match).
Since large space is freed up in the middle, the skater can not only grind wider surface areas like an entire ledge but also the frame's weight is lighter.
As opposed to anti-rockers which securely lock grinds, aggressive skaters should train themselves to remain balanced when sliding across narrow rails or edges on a Freestyle frame.
Worse still when not observing carefulness, a Freestyle setup can easily hook on vertical surfaces including steps, coping and funbox edges if you roll over them, leading to tripping incidents.
