Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. I've mentioned on the show
Speaker 1: recently that I've been trying to improve my French on
Speaker 1: Duelingo and for some languages. Duolingo has these stories where
Speaker 1: the characters have this conversation in an at least hypothetically
Speaker 1: real world kind of scenario. And there's this one where
Speaker 1: two friends Lely and Zuri are having They're having a
Speaker 1: conversation in line to ride a roller coaster, and every
Speaker 1: time Duolingo has shown me this story, I have wound
Speaker 1: up mostly focused on the fact that the French word
Speaker 1: for roller coaster is montagnous or Russian mountains, and so
Speaker 1: every time I'm like, what is the story there? And
Speaker 1: that is how we got to this episode. So during
Speaker 1: this episode, we're going to be touching a little bit
Speaker 1: on amusement park history more and generally, because there becomes
Speaker 1: a point where these two things are very tightly interconnected.
Speaker 1: But one thing we're not really going to talk about
Speaker 1: much is like roller coaster crashes and derailments and other
Speaker 1: similar incidents because there have just been so many with
Speaker 1: so many different causes. It felt sort of like trying
Speaker 1: to mention all the car crashes in the building of
Speaker 1: the interstate highway system, right. It just it felt like
Speaker 1: a list of carnage that wasn't adding up to some
Speaker 1: sort of greater understanding of anything. So that is not
Speaker 1: really going to be a focus of this. And also,
Speaker 1: I know there are a lot of roller coasterficionados out there,
Speaker 1: and there are folks who have extremely strong opinions on
Speaker 1: specific roller coasters and types of roller coasters and roller
Speaker 1: coaster records and particular designers. So I just want to
Speaker 1: say upfront that this is not in any way an
Speaker 1: exhaustive chronicle of every single thing about roller coasters. If
Speaker 1: we did not mention your favorite thing. This is more
Speaker 1: of like the trajectory of how these rides evolved over
Speaker 1: the last centuries. That could be an entire podcast just
Speaker 1: called coasting. And I maybe it is somewhere Montagna rous
Speaker 1: got their start, as the name suggests, in Russia. Specifically
Speaker 1: in Russia in the seventeenth century, as a winter pastime,
Speaker 1: people built wooden ramps and covered them with water, and
Speaker 1: that water then froze into a slick surface, and then
Speaker 1: riders would climb stairs or a ladder to the top
Speaker 1: of this frozen ramp, get into some kind of vehicle
Speaker 1: like a sled or a hollowed out log, or even
Speaker 1: an ice block with a straw seat, and slide down.
Speaker 1: Often at night, water would be applied to the ramp
Speaker 1: so that it could freeze back over into a new
Speaker 1: and totally smooth, fresh surface by morning. These frozen hills
Speaker 1: were nicknamed flying mountains. They could be up to six
Speaker 1: hundred feet or one hundred and eighty three meters long,
Speaker 1: and riders reached speeds that were reportedly up to fifty
Speaker 1: miles an hour, which is about eighty kilometers an hour. Often,
Speaker 1: at the end of the ride you would come out
Speaker 1: at the base of a second tower, so you could
Speaker 1: climb up that and just do it all over again.
Speaker 1: The logs or the ice blocks were brought back up
Speaker 1: along a track to one side of the hill, or
Speaker 1: in some cases when people were using more lightweight sleds,
Speaker 1: they would just be carried up the steps by the riders.
Speaker 1: These were really popular public attractions, especially around Saint Petersburg,
Speaker 1: and wealthy people also built smaller versions of them. On
Speaker 1: their estates for their own enjoyment. Two different empresses have
Speaker 1: been noted as having a particular love for the flying mountains, Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: who reigned from seventeen forty one to seventeen sixty two,
Speaker 1: and Katherine the Second also known as Katherine the Great,
Speaker 1: who reigned from seventeen sixty two to seventeen ninety six.
Speaker 1: So super quick Russian history refresher. Catherine the Great did
Speaker 1: not directly follow Elizabeth. Elizabeth's successor was her nephew Peter
Speaker 1: the Third, who ruled as emperor for about six months
Speaker 1: before being overthrown and assassinated. Katherine definitely played a part
Speaker 1: in his overthrow. There is still some debate over her
Speaker 1: role in his death. If you watch the show The Great,
Speaker 1: that is a version not entirely historically accurate, but I
Speaker 1: love it. Yeah. So. Some sources say that Catherine the
Speaker 1: Great was the first person to have one of these
Speaker 1: mountains fitted with grooves that could accommodate carriage wheels so
Speaker 1: that they could be used in the summer. But English
Speaker 1: clergyman John glen King, who was chaplain to Saint Petersburg,
Speaker 1: wrote a letter in seventeen seventy eight in which he
Speaker 1: credited Elizabeth, saying that Elizabeth had a flying mountain built
Speaker 1: at the Imperial Palace at Zarskicello that was usable during
Speaker 1: the summer and the winter. Catherine does seem to have
Speaker 1: built more than one of them as well, including one
Speaker 1: at or Niniba Park in Saint Petersburg. King described the
Speaker 1: flying mountain this way, quote, you will observe that there
Speaker 1: are five mounts of unequal heights. The first and highest
Speaker 1: is full thirty feet perpendicular altitude the momentum with which
Speaker 1: they descend. This carries them over the second, which is
Speaker 1: about five or six feet lower, just sufficient to allow
Speaker 1: for the friction and resistance, and so on to the last,
Speaker 1: from which they are conveyed by a gentle descent with
Speaker 1: nearly the same velocity over a piece of water into
Speaker 1: a little island. He went on to say, quote these slides,
Speaker 1: which are about a furlong and a half in length,
Speaker 1: are made of wood that they may be used in
Speaker 1: summer as well as in winter. The processes two or
Speaker 1: four persons fit in a little carriage, and one stands behind.
Speaker 1: For the more there are in it, the greater the
Speaker 1: swiftness with which it goes. That runs on casters and
Speaker 1: in grooves to keep it in its right direction, and
Speaker 1: it descends with a wonderful rapidity. Under the hills is
Speaker 1: a machine worked by horses for drawing the carriages back
Speaker 1: again with the company in them. Such a work as
Speaker 1: this would have been enormous in most countries for the
Speaker 1: labor and expense at cost, as well as the vast
Speaker 1: quantity of wood used in it. There's a little bit
Speaker 1: of conjecture around how the Russian flying mountains made their
Speaker 1: way to France and evolved into Montaigne Rouse. One likely
Speaker 1: scenario is that French soldiers saw them in eighteen twelve
Speaker 1: when Napoleon invaded the Russian Empire, although some of the
Speaker 1: sources used in this episode say the first one in
Speaker 1: France was actually built before that. Most of France really
Speaker 1: did not get cold enough in the winter to maintain
Speaker 1: a frozen sliding surface, so like the Russian empresses did
Speaker 1: during the summer, builders in France turned to vehicles that
Speaker 1: could roll down the hills on wheels. They had no
Speaker 1: safety equipment. People just had to hang on. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: episode just had a particularly large amount of sources saying
Speaker 1: totally contradictory things with absolute authorities. So I found some
Speaker 1: sources that said the very first of these were built
Speaker 1: in eighteen twelve, and then others that very confidently said
Speaker 1: that the first one was in like eighteen oh four,
Speaker 1: And which is right, I don't know. And in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixteen journal entry though armand Marie Antoinette Duplaci Marquise de
Speaker 1: Montcalm Gozon describes a French Montagne rouse this way quote.
Speaker 1: It is an inclined plane made of planks of sixty
Speaker 1: feet more or less, at the top of which is
Speaker 1: placed a sled on which one sits, and which brings
Speaker 1: you to the bottom with an extreme rapidity. This pleasure,
Speaker 1: which is not without danger, may be compared, according to
Speaker 1: the opinion of several people, to the impression that one
Speaker 1: would feel if one fell from a fourth floor window,
Speaker 1: which does not seem very seductive. These mountains are made
Speaker 1: of ice in Russia, and one hopes, in spite of
Speaker 1: the difference in climate, to imitate them in winter. A
Speaker 1: man said, in speaking of them, that he was surprised
Speaker 1: that this fashion does not elicit complaint against the influence
Speaker 1: of Russia, which is very common today to render responsible
Speaker 1: for everything. These amusements were extremely popular in France, and
Speaker 1: they were also known as promenade rienne or aerial walks.
Speaker 1: There were songs and plays about them, and people could
Speaker 1: buy all kinds of mountains souvenirs. Intense rivalries also developed
Speaker 1: between competing mountains, and in eighteen seventeen, these rivalries even
Speaker 1: inspired a satirical play called the Battle of the Mountains
Speaker 1: or bougeu faull. This popularity was somewhat ironic. Number one.
Speaker 1: These attractions seemed to have been most popular and most
Speaker 1: widespread in France in eighteen sixteen. In eighteen seventeen, in
Speaker 1: other words, during the year without a summer, which was
Speaker 1: much chillier and much rainier than normal, you can look
Speaker 1: out for an upcoming Saturday classic on the year without
Speaker 1: a summer. Number two. This was just after the end
Speaker 1: of the Napoleonic Wars. France had been defeated in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifteen and Napoleon had abdicated for the second time under
Speaker 1: the Treaty of Paris of eighteen fifteen, which officially ended
Speaker 1: the war. France was occupied by the nations that had
Speaker 1: fought against and those occupiers included Russia. It's possible that
Speaker 1: the number of montagner Rouse, built in France during the Eighteenteens,
Speaker 1: was made possible by Russian occupiers who already knew how
Speaker 1: to do it. But it's also a little odd that
Speaker 1: French citizens seemed to have really fl and celebrated something
Speaker 1: that was so closely associated with Russia, something that the
Speaker 1: Marquis alluded to in her journal entry. Montagna Rouss also
Speaker 1: became a metaphor in France during this period, both in
Speaker 1: literature and in casual conversation. A lot like roller coaster
Speaker 1: can be used today to describe the various up and
Speaker 1: downs of life, among other things. Most of these attractions
Speaker 1: closed by the end of eighteen eighteen. Sending a wheeled
Speaker 1: vehicle down a wooden track at high speeds naturally caused
Speaker 1: a lot of wear, and these tracks weren't maintained very well,
Speaker 1: so they eventually broke down. The popularity of the Montagne
Speaker 1: Rousse also plummeted that year after two riders were killed
Speaker 1: when the car that they were in stopped suddenly. The
Speaker 1: post war occupation of France also ended in eighteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: and it's possible that after that point people did kind
Speaker 1: of want to get away from all the foreign influences.
Speaker 1: We should also take a moment here to note that
Speaker 1: French is not the only language to call roller coasters
Speaker 1: some variation on Russian or Russian mountains. A lot of
Speaker 1: other languages in Western Europe do, including Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, Catalan,
Speaker 1: and Italian, among others. The next stretch of roller coaster history,
Speaker 1: kind of like this one was, is a little contradictory
Speaker 1: and sometimes vague, and we will get to it after
Speaker 1: a sponsor break. If you pull up five different articles
Speaker 1: about roller coasters, you may find at least that many
Speaker 1: completely different and yet totally authoritative declarations of which thing
Speaker 1: was the first roller coaster. Some of them also either
Speaker 1: named the Russian Flying Mountains or the French Montaigne Rouse
Speaker 1: that we already talked about, And to be fair, these
Speaker 1: do seem pretty similar to roller coasters, especially the ones
Speaker 1: that like specifically described going down this progressively smaller series
Speaker 1: of hills. We are going to talk about some of
Speaker 1: the other various contenders. In the eighteen thirties and forties,
Speaker 1: a number of centrifugal railways were built in various cities
Speaker 1: in Europe. There's some speculation that these were inspired by
Speaker 1: children's toys in which you would keep a marble or
Speaker 1: a ball rolling around on the inside of a wire track.
Speaker 1: A centrifugal railway was basically a downward slope leading into
Speaker 1: a circular vertical loop with an upward slope on the
Speaker 1: other side. Riders would get in the car on one
Speaker 1: end of the slope and ride through the vertical loop
Speaker 1: to the other side. Accounts of these centrifugal railways suggests
Speaker 1: that it was as much about the terrifying thrill of
Speaker 1: the experience as it was about watching other people do
Speaker 1: it and maybe not coming out unscathed. This was just
Speaker 1: not a smooth ride. It was full of jolts and bumps,
Speaker 1: and because the loop was shaped like a circle, the
Speaker 1: gravitational forces involved could be really intense. There also wasn't
Speaker 1: really any safety equipment, reportedly not even like seat belts.
Speaker 1: Centrifugal force was what was supposed to keep people in
Speaker 1: their seats, and that worked as long as nothing happened
Speaker 1: to cause the car to either slow down or stop suddenly.
Speaker 1: Builders tested these railways by sending a variety of inanimate
Speaker 1: objects through the loop like eggs or sandbags, as well
Speaker 1: as animals, including monkeys. In the eighteen sixties, a coal
Speaker 1: transport near what's now jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, became an amusement ride.
Speaker 1: Starting in eighteen twenty eight, the mock Chunk Switched Back
Speaker 1: Railway had carried coal about nine miles, mostly downhill, from
Speaker 1: the mines to the Lehigh Canal. A brakeman controlled the
Speaker 1: speed of the descent, and once enough cars had reached
Speaker 1: the bottom, a mule team would haul them back to
Speaker 1: the top. A return track with a steam powered hauler
Speaker 1: was added in eighteen forty four. This return track was
Speaker 1: ratcheted to keep the cars from sliding back down as
Speaker 1: the hauler stopped for some reason. Ratchet systems are still
Speaker 1: used on anti rollback devices on roller coasters today. That's
Speaker 1: what makes that repetitive clacking noise that you hear when
Speaker 1: a roller coaster is being pulled up a hill. In
Speaker 1: about eighteen sixty five, the Mock Chunks Switched Back Railway
Speaker 1: started carrying human tourists as passengers and the evenings when
Speaker 1: the mines weren't running. Then in the eighteen seventies, construction
Speaker 1: of a tunnel made the railway unnecessary for coal transport,
Speaker 1: and this railway became a tourist attraction full time. It
Speaker 1: ran as a tourist attraction until closing in nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 1: At around the same time that the mock Chunk Switchback
Speaker 1: Railway became a dedicated tourist attraction, other inventors in the
Speaker 1: United States were working on inclined railways. This term could
Speaker 1: have a few different meanings. Railways meant to pull loads
Speaker 1: up a hill, Funicular railways with two counterbalanced carriages connected
Speaker 1: by a cable, and roller coaster like amusement rides were
Speaker 1: all called inclined railways. John G. Taylor was granted a
Speaker 1: patent called Improvement of Inclined Railways in eighteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: His patent shows two parallel tracks, each of them with
Speaker 1: hills of various sizes, and the car would roll from
Speaker 1: the highest point down to the other end. His description
Speaker 1: makes it clear that there were already inclined railways being built,
Speaker 1: but that his was better because it had a switch
Speaker 1: that would move the car from one track to the
Speaker 1: other so that people could continue the journey in the
Speaker 1: other direction. Once passengers had disembarked, the car would be
Speaker 1: manually moved up a short hill before being switched back
Speaker 1: to the other track at the starting point. While Taylor's
Speaker 1: patent describes what he calls an improvement, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: all the details of a working device, like it doesn't
Speaker 1: say how the car would be stopped at the end
Speaker 1: of the line. While the illustration has a little set
Speaker 1: of steps suggesting where a passenger would disembark, the steps
Speaker 1: connect directly to one of the rails, and there's no
Speaker 1: corresponding platform for people to get on the railway, So
Speaker 1: older sources often described this as a patent that was
Speaker 1: issued for an idea, not an invention that Taylor ever
Speaker 1: actually made. However, there are multiple newspaper articles mentioning Taylor's
Speaker 1: patented inclined railway carrying actual passengers, and there is even
Speaker 1: at least one photo. As one example, the August fifteenth,
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy four, edition of the Middletown, Connecticut Daily Constitution
Speaker 1: claims that Taylor's railway carried two hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: passengers the year before with no injuries. Richard Nudson was
Speaker 1: also issued a different patent for improvement and inclined plane
Speaker 1: railways in eighteen seventy eight. This one featured a lift
Speaker 1: at each end of the track for raising the car
Speaker 1: back up to the top. It's possible that Nudson built
Speaker 1: one of these, maybe even at Coney Island, which wasn't
Speaker 1: far away from where he lived, but if he did,
Speaker 1: no documentation has been found of that yet. We don't
Speaker 1: really know who coined the term roller coaster, but according
Speaker 1: to the Oxford English Dictionary, its first written usage in
Speaker 1: English was in the Chicago Tribune in eighteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: There were some earlier uses than that, though, including in
Speaker 1: the Steuben Republican of Angola, Indiana, and the Saint Louis
Speaker 1: Post Dispatch. The Steuben Republican describes a roller coaster as
Speaker 1: the chief attraction at the tri State Fair, calling it
Speaker 1: quote a small improvement on the old time sport of
Speaker 1: riding downhill and trudging up the best way you can.
Speaker 1: The roller coaster described in this article is on an inclined,
Speaker 1: circular track about six hundred feet long, with fifteen or
Speaker 1: twenty people riding on a long bench like car for
Speaker 1: a ride that lasted about twelve seconds. The ride described
Speaker 1: in the Chicago Tribune a few days later was also circular,
Speaker 1: with a circumference of about four hundred thirty feet and
Speaker 1: a drop of about twenty two feet. The Saint Louis
Speaker 1: Post dispatch mention of roller coasters that came out around
Speaker 1: this time isn't a pair of ads. One of them
Speaker 1: is quote roller coaster sliding downhill on wheels, Lucas Place
Speaker 1: in twentieth Street, and the other is quote roller coaster
Speaker 1: the old fashioned sleigh ride. Don't fail to take a
Speaker 1: ride Lucas Place in twentieth And also, to further complicate
Speaker 1: this whole Oxford English Dictionary citation of the Chicago Tribune
Speaker 1: is the first mention. A few days before, the Tribune
Speaker 1: published an article about a roller coaster being built, which
Speaker 1: is what the OEED cites as the word's first use.
Speaker 1: It also published an ad. This ad specified that ec
Speaker 1: Hudson wanted to hire a man to act as the
Speaker 1: roller coasters manager, had a salary of twenty dollars a week,
Speaker 1: so before the building of the roller coaster was reported on,
Speaker 1: he was trying to hire somebody to run it. And
Speaker 1: now nearly two to the way through this episode, we
Speaker 1: are finally getting to someone who is very frequently described
Speaker 1: as the inventor of the roller coaster or the inventor
Speaker 1: of the first modern roller coaster or the inventor of
Speaker 1: the first commercially successful roller coaster. LaMarcus A. Thompson, who
Speaker 1: built the Switchback Gravity pleasure railway at Coney Island, New
Speaker 1: York in eighteen eighty four. Some accounts say he modeled
Speaker 1: it after Richard Knudsen's patent, and others after the mock
Speaker 1: chunk Switchback Railway. Thompson had invented other things, including a
Speaker 1: car coupler and a knitting machine, and some accounts he
Speaker 1: had worked himself to exhaustion on the knitting machine business
Speaker 1: and that had led his doctor to advise him to
Speaker 1: spend more time outside and that's what led him to
Speaker 1: build a roller coaster. In other accounts, he was a
Speaker 1: devout Christian and was concerned about the temptations of beer
Speaker 1: gardens and other vice ridden pastimes on young people, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to offer an alternative. It may have been both.
Speaker 1: I found zero primary sources confirming any of that, and
Speaker 1: every time I read some detail, I was like, where
Speaker 1: are you getting this? In addition to the fact that
Speaker 1: we've already talked about a whole lot of things that
Speaker 1: could be called the first roller coaster, Thompson's roller Coasting
Speaker 1: structure patented in eighteen eighty five, doesn't seem all that
Speaker 1: roller coaster e in a lot of ways. There were
Speaker 1: two parallel tracks, with the ends of the tracks at
Speaker 1: the same height, and riders would go out on one
Speaker 1: track and back on the other through a series of
Speaker 1: slopes that looked pretty gentle in the patent illustration. Since
Speaker 1: friction and air resistance and other factors meant that the
Speaker 1: car wouldn't be able to get to the top at
Speaker 1: the far end of the track by itself, it did
Speaker 1: so by quote means being provided to continue the car
Speaker 1: to the top. That meant that somebody pushed it the
Speaker 1: rest of the way. Passengers road sideways on what was
Speaker 1: basically a bench, and they traveled at about six miles
Speaker 1: an hour, So this was more about getting a view
Speaker 1: of Coney Islands than about any kind of extreme thrill seeking.
Speaker 1: Maybe riding a bench at six miles an hour would
Speaker 1: have felt really thrilling at the time. A lot of
Speaker 1: people run that fast found that a little amusing for
Speaker 1: that reason. Sometimes Thompson's rides are called scenic railways rather
Speaker 1: than roller coasters, but slower not Thompson's first ride at
Speaker 1: Coney Island was extremely popular. People paid five cents to
Speaker 1: ride it, and he recouped all the money he'd spent
Speaker 1: to build it in about three weeks. He also kept
Speaker 1: working on developments for his invention, and by eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: seven he held about thirty patents related to roller coasters.
Speaker 1: He also founded a company to build scenic railways, which
Speaker 1: often took riders past dioramas, scenery, and other theatrical and
Speaker 1: visual elements. There are a lot of comparisons to the
Speaker 1: It's a Small World ride at Disney, but on a
Speaker 1: railroad instead of well, it makes me think of the
Speaker 1: Disneyland Railway, which is like train ride that goes past
Speaker 1: dioramas and you're like, oh, dinosaurs. I've never been to Disneyland,
Speaker 1: so I don't know that one. It got reworked, and
Speaker 1: I don't I don't want to make any promises. I
Speaker 1: don't remember what all, if anything got added or subtracted there.
Speaker 1: But that's how it's worked for a long time. We
Speaker 1: call it rolling bench. It makes us so happy to
Speaker 1: just sit there and watch beautiful things. I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: on a couple of times that I have been to
Speaker 1: Disney in Florida, not in California. As an adult, I
Speaker 1: have delighted in the rides where you just sit down
Speaker 1: in a cool space and ride and look at things.
Speaker 1: Give me The people move all day long. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna move on to the spread of rides like these
Speaker 1: or faster versions of rides like these, after quick sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Before we talk about how roller coasters proliferated, especially in
Speaker 1: the United States, we should talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the development of amusement parks, because, especially from this point on,
Speaker 1: roller coasters and amusement parks are very tightly linked. So
Speaker 1: there's not really one linear family tree of amusement parks.
Speaker 1: It's more like multiple possible influences going all the way
Speaker 1: back to the medieval period. Some of their earliest precursors
Speaker 1: were probably European trade fairs, such as Saint Bartholomew's Fair,
Speaker 1: which started in England in eleven thirty three. This was
Speaker 1: an annual event that incorporated both trade and entertainment, and
Speaker 1: through the centuries, Saint Bartholomew's and other fairs gradually became
Speaker 1: more and more focused on food, drink, and amusements, including rides.
Speaker 1: For example, there were early versions of ferris wheels at
Speaker 1: Saint Bartholomew's Fair in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Overlap
Speaker 1: with trade fairs were pleasure gardens, which operated during most
Speaker 1: or all of the year, rather than just for a
Speaker 1: few days or weeks at a time. Also had a
Speaker 1: lot of food and entertainments and rides. Sometimes these were
Speaker 1: built by the owners of inns or taverns who were
Speaker 1: looking for ways to bring in more clientele during their
Speaker 1: slower periods. Then, the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw
Speaker 1: the rise of large international exhibitions or World's fairs, where
Speaker 1: the nations exhibiting at the fair showed off their new
Speaker 1: developments and accomplishments. Many of these fairs featured ethnological expositions
Speaker 1: that were essentially human zoos. The World's Colombian Exposition of
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety three also had an entertainment area that was
Speaker 1: separate from all the exhibitions, which it called the Midway,
Speaker 1: and it was like a carnival with side shows, food,
Speaker 1: and rides. This intersects with the rise of trolley parks
Speaker 1: toward the end of the nineteenth century, and many areas
Speaker 1: colley lines were charged a flat fee for electricity, regardless
Speaker 1: of how many trolleys were running, or how many passengers
Speaker 1: those trolleys were carrying, So something that was mostly happening
Speaker 1: in the United States, and a lot of trolley companies
Speaker 1: started investing in attractions at the end of the line
Speaker 1: to try to bring passengers onto the trolley on their
Speaker 1: day off of work. Often the entry to the park
Speaker 1: itself was free, and then people would pay for rides
Speaker 1: and food and drink. In nineteen oh two, day Allen
Speaker 1: Willie wrote of this quote, the expression trolley park may
Speaker 1: not as yet have come into common use, but no
Speaker 1: explanation of its meaning is necessary. The oldest of the
Speaker 1: trolley parks has been in existence but a few years.
Speaker 1: Yet today these resorts are to be found on the
Speaker 1: outskirts of nearly every city in the land. The fact
Speaker 1: is that the street and suburban railway companies, realizing the
Speaker 1: profit arising by catering to the pleasure of the masses,
Speaker 1: have entered into the amusement field on an extensive scale.
Speaker 1: There were other factors involved beside just the trolley lines
Speaker 1: wanting to make money. Among other things, increased urbanization meant
Speaker 1: that there were more city dwellers looking for some kind
Speaker 1: of outdoor recreation. By nineteen nineteen, almost every major city
Speaker 1: in the US had at least one trolley park. Coney
Speaker 1: Island in New York was one such destination. By the
Speaker 1: middle of the nineteenth century, it had already become a
Speaker 1: seaside resort area thanks to its location at the southern
Speaker 1: tip of Brooklyn, New York. It shift into being associated
Speaker 1: with amusement parks started with the construction of individual rides,
Speaker 1: including the Switchback Gravity Pleasure Railway. The first enclosed amusement
Speaker 1: park built at Coney Island was Sea Lion Park, which
Speaker 1: opened in eighteen eighty five. The most famous of these
Speaker 1: parks was probably Luna Park, which opened in nineteen oh
Speaker 1: three and then became the namesake for a lot of
Speaker 1: other amusement parks all over the world. More trolley parks
Speaker 1: and more amusement parks meant more rides, including more roller coasters,
Speaker 1: and that led to a lot of developments being made really,
Speaker 1: really quickly. In eighteen eighty five, Philip Hinkel developed a
Speaker 1: hoist that pulled cars up to the top of the
Speaker 1: first hill, which let the cars start out higher and
Speaker 1: ultimately reach a faster speed. In eighteen ninety four, e
Speaker 1: Joy Morris produced the Figure eight side friction coaster, which
Speaker 1: had wheels rolling along the tracks inner edge and allowed
Speaker 1: for faster speeds and tighter turns. This was also the
Speaker 1: first widely mass produced roller coaster, making it possible for
Speaker 1: parks all over North America to buy and build one
Speaker 1: of their own. Over the next decades, a rise in
Speaker 1: mechanization and mass production techniques made it possible for more
Speaker 1: designers to create roller coasters that would give the same
Speaker 1: consistent ride every time, no matter where the coaster was built,
Speaker 1: at least fully in theory. In theory. Two people who
Speaker 1: were working on vertical loop roller coasters near the turn
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century were Lena Beecher and Edwin Prescott.
Speaker 1: Prescott was awarded a patent for the Loop. The Loop,
Speaker 1: which was installed at Coney Island. Like the centrifugal railways
Speaker 1: that had been built in Europe more than fifty years before,
Speaker 1: this beatured a circular vertical loop. In eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: Lena Beecher developed another circular vertical loop roller coaster called
Speaker 1: the Flip Flap, which was also built at Coney Island. Then,
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh one, Edwin Prescott developed a looping roller
Speaker 1: coaster with a tear drop shaped loop, which reduced some
Speaker 1: of the excessive g forces that riders were subjected to
Speaker 1: in a circular loop. A lot of roller coaster loops
Speaker 1: still have that kind of tear drop shape design today,
Speaker 1: and then Beecher soon adopted a tear drop shape design
Speaker 1: for his own vertical roller coaster as well. John Miller
Speaker 1: worked with a number of different roller coaster designers, including
Speaker 1: LaMarcus Thompson, and he was issued his first patent in
Speaker 1: nineteen ten for a safety device called the chain lift,
Speaker 1: which kept roller coaster cars from rolling backwards. This was
Speaker 1: the first of many patents Miller was awarded a lot
Speaker 1: of them for safety features or for features that made
Speaker 1: it possible for roller coasters to go faster, higher, or
Speaker 1: through sharper turns than they did before without crashing or derailing.
Speaker 1: Another of his major innovations was under friction wheels, which
Speaker 1: helped prevent derailments, and he patented those in nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: By this point, amusement parks were being built in other
Speaker 1: parts of the world as well, often with American engineers
Speaker 1: or designers working as consultants or with American companies providing
Speaker 1: blueprints or even entire disassembled rides to be put together
Speaker 1: on site. In nineteen ten, this had reached the point
Speaker 1: that the US Department of State recognized usement parks as
Speaker 1: a trade opportunity and asked trade consoles to gather information
Speaker 1: about existing parks and opportunities to build new ones. All
Speaker 1: over the world. By the nineteen twenties, there were amusement
Speaker 1: parks on every continent except Antarctica, many of them pattern
Speaker 1: after the parks on Coney Island, and this was a
Speaker 1: really like a heyday for roller coasters. The Coney Islands Cyclone,
Speaker 1: built in nineteen twenty seven, reached speeds of fifty five
Speaker 1: miles or eighty nine kilometers per hour, and it had
Speaker 1: an eighty five foot drop, something that's not nearly as
Speaker 1: fast or tall as most newly built roller coasters today,
Speaker 1: but it was at the time groundbreaking. The Coney Islands
Speaker 1: Cyclone still stands today and is build as the second
Speaker 1: steepest wooden roller coaster in the world. The boom and
Speaker 1: trolley parks, amusement parks and roller coasters in the United
Speaker 1: States was also happening, alongside increasingly legislated racial segregation in
Speaker 1: many parts of the country. Many parks either allowed only
Speaker 1: white patrons or allowed patrons regardless of race, but also
Speaker 1: had segregated facilities like restrooms and only allowed white patrons
Speaker 1: in some areas like restaurants. But there were also black
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs who opened their own parks, such as joy Land
Speaker 1: in Chicago, which was the first black owned and operated
Speaker 1: amusement park in the United States. In the United States,
Speaker 1: amusement parks and their roller coasters started to go into
Speaker 1: a decline during the depression in World War Two. During
Speaker 1: the depression, people often just didn't have the money to
Speaker 1: visit an amusement park or to invest in building a
Speaker 1: new one. During and after World War Two, people became
Speaker 1: more focused on exercise based recreations, such as organized athletic teams.
Speaker 1: The post war baby boom also led to more parks
Speaker 1: that were focused specifically on recreation for children. As more
Speaker 1: people started driving cars and the US started building more
Speaker 1: roads and highways to accommodate them, the idea of taking
Speaker 1: a train or trolley to the park at the end
Speaker 1: of the line started to fall out of fashion. This
Speaker 1: was not as true in other parts of the world, though,
Speaker 1: As the amusement park economy cooled in the United States,
Speaker 1: American developers started intentionally focusing on other countries, some of
Speaker 1: which continued to build new parks all the way through
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties and forties. These ongoing international efforts by
Speaker 1: American companies to build amusement parks and roller coasters in
Speaker 1: other countries maybe why In Russia, for example, roller coasters
Speaker 1: are not Russian mountains. They are americanski gorky or American
Speaker 1: slides basically. And there are a lot of other languages
Speaker 1: whose words for roller coaster include some version of American.
Speaker 1: These include Ukrainian, Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian. In the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: there had been thousands of roller coasters in the United States,
Speaker 1: but as the nineteen sixties approached, there were fewer than
Speaker 1: two two hundreds still in operation. But then there was
Speaker 1: another big shift with the opening of Disneyland in Anaheim, California,
Speaker 1: on July seventeenth, nineteen fifty five, followed by the opening
Speaker 1: of the Matterhorn roller coaster there on June fourteenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine. Sometimes the Matterhorn is described as the first
Speaker 1: steel track roller coaster, but there were earlier steel coasters.
Speaker 1: What set the matter Horn apart was that the tracks
Speaker 1: were tubular, meaning that the ride was a lot smoother
Speaker 1: than on earlier coasters. Disneyland is often credited with sparking
Speaker 1: a resurgence in the building of theme parks in the
Speaker 1: United States. Sometimes people use theme park and amusement park interchangeably,
Speaker 1: but there's a little new ones there. Basically, theme parks
Speaker 1: are abusement parks designed around a theme. It's pretty self explanatory.
Speaker 1: The development of tubular steel roller coaster tracks paved the
Speaker 1: way for so many other roller coaster innovations, just as
Speaker 1: some examples. The first cork screw roller coaster was the
Speaker 1: Roaring Twenties Corkscrew at Nottsbury Farm in California, which was
Speaker 1: later moved to Silverwood Theme Park in Idaho. The first
Speaker 1: shuttle launched coasters were developed in nineteen seventy seven, and
Speaker 1: the first roller coasters with interlocking vertical loops debut in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, one of those being the Lockness Monster
Speaker 1: at Bush Gardens in Virginia. The first suspended roller coasters
Speaker 1: opened in the nineteen eighties, with riders hanging below the
Speaker 1: rail rather than sitting above it in a car that
Speaker 1: could swing as it went around turns. The first inverted coasters,
Speaker 1: which have riders similarly below the track but don't swing
Speaker 1: out in that way, came out in the early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: Electromagnetic propulsion systems were introduced for roller coasters in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, making it possible for coasters to be launched
Speaker 1: very quickly rather than pulled up hills to coast most
Speaker 1: or all of the rest of the way. Today's biggest
Speaker 1: fastest roller coasters so different from the ones that we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier in the show. Currently, the tallest roller
Speaker 1: coaster in the world is listed as the Kingdoka at
Speaker 1: six Flags Grade Adventure in New Jersey that is four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty six feet or one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: nine meters tall, and the fastest at this moment that
Speaker 1: we're reading is Formula RASA at Ferrari World Abu Dhabi,
Speaker 1: which reaches speeds of one hundred and forty nine point
Speaker 1: one miles an hour, which is two hundred and forty
Speaker 1: kilometers per hour. So of course, there have also been
Speaker 1: a lot of safety innovations throughout these same years to
Speaker 1: try to make it possible for coasters to go that high.
Speaker 1: And that fast without being just extraordinarily deadly. While fatal
Speaker 1: roller coaster disasters are rare at this point, less severe
Speaker 1: injuries are a lot more common. It's kind of tricky
Speaker 1: to give exact numbers because a lot of statistics group
Speaker 1: amusement park rides together rather than isolating roller coaster injuries specifically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even with all the various like shoulder harnesses and you know,
Speaker 1: other ways to try to keep the passengers in these safe,
Speaker 1: Like it's still a lot of a lot of drops
Speaker 1: and a whipping around, and like there are opportunities for
Speaker 1: various physiological consequences of that. Yeah, Yeah, I'm sure we
Speaker 1: will talk some more about roller coasters on Friday. And
Speaker 1: in the meanwhile, I have listener mail from Jeff. Jeff
Speaker 1: wrote and said love the show. I've been listening for years.
Speaker 1: Just an added note on modern day use of military balloons.
Speaker 1: I was a paratrooper in Canada in the nineties. When
Speaker 1: paratroopers train with other Allied countries or airborne forces, they
Speaker 1: are often awarded that country's jump wings as an honorary
Speaker 1: sort of thing. My regiment sent soldiers to the UK
Speaker 1: to work with the Parachute Regiment. While there, they did
Speaker 1: basic UK parachute training and they were awarded their British
Speaker 1: jump wings. The training jumps they did were from balloons.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they still trained this way or not,
Speaker 1: but they did in the nineties. The balloon was on
Speaker 1: a winch that could be raised and lowered. The candidate
Speaker 1: got in the basket and the winch was spooled out
Speaker 1: to about a thousand feet. They opened the door on
Speaker 1: the side of the basket and performed their drills with
Speaker 1: the instructor and then jumped out of the basket and
Speaker 1: parachuted to the ground. The basket was then winched back
Speaker 1: down to pick up the next candidate. Here's a link, Jeff.
Speaker 1: I did not know that, Jeff, but that makes total
Speaker 1: sense that that could be a good way to get
Speaker 1: people trained on do them parachute jumps. If you would
Speaker 1: like to send us a note about this or any
Speaker 1: other podcasts, we're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com
Speaker 1: and we're all over social media. Ad missed in History,
Speaker 1: so we'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, and
Speaker 1: you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app
Speaker 1: or wherever you like to get door podcasts stuff. You
Speaker 1: missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.