Roller skates

[1] They were hard to steer and stopping was difficult due to the fact that they did not have any type of braking mechanism and as such they failed to gain popularity.

[2] In the 1840s, Meyerbeer's opera Le prophète featured a scene in which performers used roller-skates to simulate ice-skating on a frozen lake set on stage.

This was a vast improvement on the Merlin design, one that was easier to use and drove the huge popularity of roller skating, dubbed "rinkomania" in the 1860s and 1870s,[4] which spread to Europe and around the world, and continued through the 1930s.

The National Sporting Goods Association statistics showed, from a 1999 study, that 2.5 million people played roller hockey.

Roller skating popularity began during the late 1950s and 1960s at rock 'n' roll teen dance halls, but exploded and took off in the 1970s and 1980s due to the introduction of large rubberized polymer wheels such as Krypto-Pro, to replace metal wheels, becoming popular and an iconic thing of that time.

Many popular brands sold out to the point of back-order, with many people taking up the hobby during COVID-19 quarantines across the globe.

Almost all roller skate plates achieve this by sandwiching each truck between a pair of flexible cylindrical "cushions" or bushings so that it can tilt.