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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Today

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Speaker 1: is Saturday, so we have a vault episode for you,

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Speaker 1: and it's one that I give you a heads up

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Speaker 1: about a couple of weeks ago. This is going to

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Speaker 1: be the Invention of roller Skates. It originally published six

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Speaker 1: four twenty five, and it builds on the episode we

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Speaker 1: did on the Invention of ice skates. That one recently

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Speaker 1: re ran as a vault episode, but you can also

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Speaker 1: find it in the archives. So either way, here you go,

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Speaker 1: strap on those roller skates. Let's have a good time.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Limb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to

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Speaker 3: be doing one of our invention episodes and the subject

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Speaker 3: is roller skates. I was going to say this is

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Speaker 3: kind of a sequel to an episode we did a

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Speaker 3: few weeks ago about the invention of ice skates, but

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Speaker 3: it might be more accurate to say that episode was

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Speaker 3: a prequel to this one, because from what I recall, Rob,

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Speaker 3: you wanted to look at skating as a subject because

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Speaker 3: your family has gotten into roller skating. Or blading lately.

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Speaker 3: Is that the case.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And not a huge story really, but essentially,

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Speaker 1: I have some friends who got into roller skating during

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Speaker 1: the pandemic, which you know, increased my awareness of this

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Speaker 1: individual's involvement in various local skating meetups and so forth,

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Speaker 1: And my now thirteen year old also recently got into

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Speaker 1: the roller skating scene as well, and so I've just

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Speaker 1: been really impressed by, first of all, the fact that

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Speaker 1: roller skating is back. I remember as a kid in

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Speaker 1: the nineties seeing various bits of media about roller blades,

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Speaker 1: and I was just like, oh, well, this is the future,

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Speaker 1: roller blades of the future. Roller skating is just done.

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Speaker 3: Oh that's funny. I feel like when I was a

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Speaker 3: kid in the nineties, like I considered both roller skating

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Speaker 3: and blading to be in but blading was the more

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Speaker 3: extreme version. In a very nineties television commercial, coded kind

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Speaker 3: of way, it's the code red flavor of skating.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean definitely. I mean, there were,

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Speaker 1: of course, plenty of roller skating rinks around, so I

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Speaker 1: didn't think it was it was actually dead. But the

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Speaker 1: thing I would see on MTV and so forth was

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Speaker 1: the roller blading and so it seemed like the future.

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Speaker 1: So it's nice to see that it's the roller skating

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Speaker 1: itself is back and with such gusto. And then the

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Speaker 1: other part of the equation is that I've just really

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Speaker 1: impressed by the culture of many of these rollers blading groups.

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Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of progressive and inviting aspects.

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Speaker 1: There's more than a little disco culture still thrown in there.

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Speaker 1: And so I was, yeah, I was interested in the

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Speaker 1: invention of the roller skate. And we quickly realized, well,

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Speaker 1: you can't talk about skates without talking about ice skates,

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Speaker 1: and so we ended up doing that whole episode just

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Speaker 1: on ice skates.

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Speaker 3: Right, because it just so happens that ice skating is

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Speaker 3: an earlier invention, so we had to talk about it first,

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Speaker 3: but here we are, sure, yeah, much earlier, but here

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Speaker 3: we are with roller skates today.

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Speaker 1: That's right, And I imagine we have a number of

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Speaker 1: skaters out there. I myself am not a roller skater.

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Speaker 1: Oh okay, I can't remember the last time I was

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Speaker 1: on skates. I'm not saying I won't pick it up

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Speaker 1: at some point in the future, but as of right now,

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Speaker 1: I just ice skate maybe once a year, though I

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Speaker 1: did not in the past year, so maybe it's every

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Speaker 1: two years I ice skate, but it is indeed a

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Speaker 1: big deal. I was not just basing it on my

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Speaker 1: own observations here. I looked up an article from twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty two who was published on NPR titled roller skating

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Speaker 1: feels a lot like love, and following is just part

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Speaker 1: of the process. This was by Kiya Miyaka Noez And Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this article points out that there was this huge boom

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Speaker 1: in popularity during the pandemic after having fallen sharply in

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Speaker 1: popularity during the late twentieth century. Maybe, and I'm just

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Speaker 1: guessing here lining up with my nineties kid observations of

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Speaker 1: the rise of the roller blade.

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Speaker 3: This is funny because you're you're making this distinction between

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Speaker 3: roller skating and roller blading, which I considered really the

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Speaker 3: same thing. Is just like different different forms of the shoe.

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Speaker 1: It may be an artificial distinction that I'm really harping

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Speaker 1: on here, because again, I'm not a skater, So people

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Speaker 1: who are actually skaters can probably like chime in and

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Speaker 1: they may say, well, yeah, I sometimes aware these sometimes

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Speaker 1: aware the others, or maybe there is some are there,

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Speaker 1: are there differences between roller skaters and rollerbladers. I guess

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Speaker 1: some of the events that I've I've been to and

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Speaker 1: not participated in, I have seen people using both types

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Speaker 1: of skates. But this author here also aligns of the

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Speaker 1: popularity of roller skating during the nineteen seventies with disco,

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Speaker 1: and again that's probably a strong reason why you see

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Speaker 1: some disco vibes to some of the current skate culture.

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Speaker 3: I think even in the nineties, one of the skating

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Speaker 3: rinks I went to in like Tennessee had a disco

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Speaker 3: ball in it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but so you might be forgiven, just you know,

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Speaker 1: via the consumption of media into thinking that Okay, disco

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Speaker 1: is dead. It's not really dead and didn't die. You

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Speaker 1: might likewise think, well, skating also fell off in popularity

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Speaker 1: and it's never coming back. But then it did come

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Speaker 1: back and it's still holding on to that popularity as well.

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Speaker 1: It you know, survived in various groups, maybe just under

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Speaker 1: the radar of a lot of the mainstream, and it's

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Speaker 1: apparently big business today. According to Business Research Insights from

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Speaker 1: earlier this year, the roller skating market size is quote

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Speaker 1: valued it approximately USD four point eight billion in twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty four and is expected to reach USD seven point

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Speaker 1: nine billion by twenty thirty two. So whether you're you're

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Speaker 1: hip or square, whether you're concerned with the culture or

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Speaker 1: with just the raw numbers involved in it, I think

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Speaker 1: there's no denying the power roller skating today. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's it's great exercise by most accounts, and it's also

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Speaker 1: a form of social expression, so I think that's great.

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Speaker 3: I also have not tried it since I was a kid,

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Speaker 3: so I have no idea how hard it would be.

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Speaker 3: Like I literally I could put them on and just

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Speaker 3: pick it right up, or maybe it would be a

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Speaker 3: grueling discovery that I just can't do this anymore. I

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Speaker 3: really don't know.

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Speaker 1: I think you'd be comfortable, either of us would be

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Speaker 1: comfortable in like an hour or so.

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Speaker 3: That's encouraging. I was going to say I'd like to

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Speaker 3: pick it up, but I was just now remembering another

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Speaker 3: reason that it was always kind of difficult when I

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Speaker 3: was a kid, because I did have a pair of

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Speaker 3: skates when I was a kid, but it was that

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Speaker 3: my neighborhood is like my house is on a hill,

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Speaker 3: so it was like I always felt like I don't

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Speaker 3: know if I can, like if I go down the hill,

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Speaker 3: can I get back up or I have to take

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Speaker 3: my skates off? Or am I going to careen into something?

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Speaker 3: So I don't know. Maybe maybe skating is easier if

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Speaker 3: you live in a very flat place.

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Speaker 1: Wait, are you saying that you were trepidacious about skating

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Speaker 1: to the skating rink because there were hills.

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Speaker 3: Skating around my house, like around on the sidewalks and

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Speaker 3: streets around my house and stuff.

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Speaker 1: Oh okay, yes, I see, yeah, Because to be clear,

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Speaker 1: for anyone that's not familiar, like, there are different modes

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Speaker 1: of skating, Like you just go and skate in a rink,

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Speaker 1: but then there are plenty people who go out and skate,

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Speaker 1: you know, on various designated streets and so forth, you know,

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Speaker 1: and there are different types of wheels that correspond with

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Speaker 1: exactly what you're skating on.

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Speaker 3: So one surprising thing that I remember we discovered when

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Speaker 3: we were preparing for the ice skating episode is that

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Speaker 3: the core physics question of how and why ice skating

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Speaker 3: works in effect, why is ice of slippery? Why can

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Speaker 3: you achieve such low friction motion over the top of it?

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Speaker 3: That question is not fully solved. We have much better

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Speaker 3: ideas than we used to about the answer to that,

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Speaker 3: but as of the past few years, it has still

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Speaker 3: been an active area of research. I do not believe

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Speaker 3: any such mysteries exist with regards to roller skating. It's

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Speaker 3: not like a baffling scientific question. Roller skating does not

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Speaker 3: rely on any strange, low friction quasi liquid layers at

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Speaker 3: the surface of ice. Instead, it's the principle of the

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Speaker 3: wheel and axle, which, at the risk of sounding hubristic,

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Speaker 3: I think we've got that one pretty well figured out. Yes,

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Speaker 3: But despite the fact that there's less scientific mystery involved

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Speaker 3: in how roller skating works, doesn't mean that the history

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Speaker 3: is uninteresting. And there are a lot of twists and

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Speaker 3: turns here.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, more so than I was expecting. But you know,

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Speaker 1: then again, you know, you get into inventions from this

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Speaker 1: time period, and it often does end up a little

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Speaker 1: more complex, with parallel discoveries, parallel breakthroughs, different independent creations

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Speaker 1: of the same thing, and then of course folks trying

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Speaker 1: to make money off of those inventions.

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Speaker 3: That's right. So I think one thing we can definitely

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Speaker 3: say about the invention of roller skates is that there

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Speaker 3: is no clear moment in history that can be pinpointed

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Speaker 3: as the earliest roller skate there was a from what

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Speaker 3: I can tell, very economically and historically important roller skate

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Speaker 3: model created in the eighteen sixties by an American businessman

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Speaker 3: named James Plimpton. And I think we'll come back and

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Speaker 3: discuss the success of that model in a bit, and

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Speaker 3: then other models around it, But it's worth identifying first

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Speaker 3: that we know for certain Plimpton was not the first

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Speaker 3: person to put wheels on shoes. We have many well

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Speaker 3: documented earlier examples. And then beyond that, I'd say, because

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Speaker 3: of how obvious the concept is, like applying the wheel

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Speaker 3: and axle principle to the bottom of a shoe, we

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Speaker 3: can just guess that there were almost certainly even older

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Speaker 3: examples than the earliest ones we know about, probably going

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Speaker 3: back hundreds or even thousands of years. But we simply

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Speaker 3: don't have any evidence of those models, written records and

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Speaker 3: no physical remains. But it would be it would be foolish,

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Speaker 3: in my opinion, to assume that they had Nobody had

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Speaker 3: ever done this.

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Speaker 1: Right right, And this ties ties in with our past

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Speaker 1: discussions on the wheel itself, because the wheel and the

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Speaker 1: wheel wheeled vehicle as concepts can be found in various

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Speaker 1: cultures in different times, even among people who did not

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Speaker 1: make use of the wheel for practical labor or conveyance.

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Speaker 1: A wheeled vehicle's usefulness, as we discussed, depends on the

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Speaker 1: underlying state of roads, and there's a similar situation in

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Speaker 1: play with roller skates to a large degree, though, I

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Speaker 1: was surprised to find out that that off road roller

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Speaker 1: skating does seem to be a thing today. You can

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Speaker 1: find videos of it, you can buy these skates, but

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Speaker 1: for the most part it was.

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Speaker 3: Not a thing like roller skating in the mud is like, I.

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Speaker 1: Guess people are going out there and getting it, so

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Speaker 1: more power to them. But yeah, I can only imagine,

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Speaker 1: just as at various points the past, probably lost to

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Speaker 1: the mists of history, you know, various people made little

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Speaker 1: toys on wheels. Some of those toys were stepped upon,

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Speaker 1: some of those toys were intentionally placed under feet, and

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Speaker 1: someone was a joker at a party somewhere.

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Speaker 3: Sorry, when we're done here, I got to look up

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Speaker 3: these off road skating and see what it's about. I'm

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Speaker 3: imagining people with like monster truck tires on their feet.

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Speaker 1: I can think that's kind of the vibe that, as

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Speaker 1: with all of this listeners right in we want to

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Speaker 1: hear from rollerbladers, roller skaters, and any off road roller

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Speaker 1: skaters out there as well.

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Speaker 3: So I mentioned that we know very well about some

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Speaker 3: earlier roller skate models than the ones that achieved commercial

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Speaker 3: success in the nineteenth century. So what were some of

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Speaker 3: these earlier roller skate models for which we do have

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Speaker 3: solid evidence? There is a commonly cited book length work

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Speaker 3: on this which does get into the history out. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 3: I was not able to get a copy of this book.

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Speaker 3: It's called The History of roller Skating by James Turner

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Speaker 3: with Michael Zaidman, published by the National Museum of Roller Skating.

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Speaker 3: I think this is in Nebraska. Seems to be out

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Speaker 3: of print. You can get a used copy on Amazon

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Speaker 3: for only three hundred and sixty dollars. Should we go

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Speaker 3: in on that?

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Speaker 1: How we could have with more time, I guess.

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Speaker 3: So anyway, wasn't able to get a copy of this

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Speaker 3: book myself. But Michael Pollock, the author of a short

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Speaker 3: twenty fifteen article in The New York Times called The

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Speaker 3: History of roller Skates, apparently was able to get a

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Speaker 3: copy somehow, and he says that Turner and Zaidman the

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Speaker 3: authors of this book right that the earliest recorded inventor

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Speaker 3: of roller skates was an eccentric eighteenth century Flemish inventor

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Speaker 3: and instrument maker named John Joseph Merlin, aka the Ingenious Mechanic.

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Speaker 3: And that's mechanic with a C K at the end,

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Speaker 3: so you know it's legit.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So John Joseph Merlin lived from seventeen thirty five to

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Speaker 3: eighteen oh three. I looked this guy up and it

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Speaker 3: turns out he was a real character. So I would

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Speaker 3: like to just sort of go into his biography for

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Speaker 3: a bit.

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Speaker 1: I mean, with a name like that, yeah, it's got

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Speaker 1: to be good.

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Speaker 3: So I want to mention a couple of nice accessible

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Speaker 3: sources on Merlin. One is a blog post hosted by

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Speaker 3: the Internet Cello Society because he was also an instrument maker,

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Speaker 3: called Magical Merlin. This was written by an American cellist

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Speaker 3: and music professor named Sarah Freiberg. Also, I found a

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Speaker 3: good twenty eighteen post on a historical blog known as

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Speaker 3: London Historians by an author named Mike Rindell a bit

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Speaker 3: of basic biography. John Joseph Merlin was born in seventeen

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Speaker 3: thirty five in the city of Hui, which is today

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Speaker 3: in the country of Belgium. I think at the time

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Speaker 3: it was in a principality that doesn't exist anymore, and

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Speaker 3: I don't remember the name of But when he was

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Speaker 3: a young man, Merlin studied for six years at the

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Speaker 3: Academy of Sciences in Paris, where he learned a lot

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Speaker 3: of what would become useful in his career as a

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Speaker 3: mechanical inventor and engineer. In the year seventeen sixty, at

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Speaker 3: the age of twenty five, he moved to London, first,

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Speaker 3: I think as part of a diplomatic group, shortly after

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Speaker 3: which he made friends with a bunch of fashionable and

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Speaker 3: influential people in london intellectual and artistic circles. Merlin was

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Speaker 3: a man of many talents. Most notably he invented a

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Speaker 3: bunch of beautiful and dazzling mechanical automata rob We've done

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Speaker 3: episodes on automatave from this period in the past. These

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Speaker 3: were sort of eighteenth century clockwork robots. So the word

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Speaker 3: robot could be a little misleading because that might imply

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Speaker 3: some level of decision making or agency. These machines did

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Speaker 3: not in any way exercise decision making action independence, agency

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Speaker 3: anything like that. They were more like ingenia complex wind

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Speaker 3: up toys that would go through a series of predetermined motions,

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Speaker 3: but still remarkable engineering achievements.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, as I recall, it kind of varies from creator

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Speaker 1: to create or from one creation to another, but there

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Speaker 1: was sometimes a vibe of something more like pure novelty,

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Speaker 1: and then other times there was this kind of aspect

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Speaker 1: to it. You know, sometimes you were supposed to really

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Speaker 1: think about what you were looking at. Other times it

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Speaker 1: was maybe like just a little more for humor's sake.

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Speaker 3: Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. I thought

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Speaker 3: you were going in a different direction though, but you're

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Speaker 3: exactly right. Some of these I think were meant to illustrate.

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Speaker 3: There were kind of works of art in a way

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Speaker 3: meant to illustrate philosophical principles, to connect to different theories

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Speaker 3: about the origin of movements and even theology and cosmology

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Speaker 3: and what it meant for things to be alive and so, yeah,

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Speaker 3: we've talked about that in the past, how these works

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Speaker 3: connected to those different schools of philosophy at the time.

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Speaker 3: But the other distinction I was making was the ones

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Speaker 3: that are like, here's something interesting to look at and

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Speaker 3: you know, being very clear about how it works, versus

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Speaker 3: the ones where it was like, this is actually alive

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Speaker 3: and it's really making decisions and stuff, yeah, which was

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Speaker 3: not true.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And then sometimes there was kind of a little

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Speaker 1: trickery in the degree to which things were automated. Go

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Speaker 1: back into the archives, I believe we have episodes on

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Speaker 1: the pooping duck. Yes, this being like a key focal

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Speaker 1: point of some of these issues.

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Speaker 3: But like I said, despite the fact that they were

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Speaker 3: not actually like independent agentic robots in any way, they

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Speaker 3: were more like very intricate, complex wind up toys. Still

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Speaker 3: remarkable engineering achievements. And if you want to see one

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Speaker 3: of one of Merlin's co creations that he made actually

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Speaker 3: with the help of a bunch of other people, I

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Speaker 3: think in a project that was helmed by a guy

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Speaker 3: named James Cox, who I'll get to in a minute,

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Speaker 3: you can look up the silver Swan automaton, which still

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Speaker 3: exists and you can see today, or at least could

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Speaker 3: as of recently I think, probably still today at the

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Speaker 3: Bows Museum in northern England. So just to describe it quickly,

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Speaker 3: this is a life sized swan made out of silver,

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Speaker 3: apparently a huge mass of silver went into its creation,

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Speaker 3: and it's sitting on a tray a platform that represents

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Speaker 3: a stream where the water is made out of these long,

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Speaker 3: thin glass rods. And so this thing still works today.

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Speaker 3: You can wind it up and see it move. And

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Speaker 3: when you do that, the glass rods move back and

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Speaker 3: forth and resemble running water, and the stream part is

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Speaker 3: surrounded by silver leaves. Again, you can look up video

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Speaker 3: of this. It's kind of amazing how graceful and smooth

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Speaker 3: and lifelike. The movements of the swan itself are. The

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Speaker 3: swan kind of swivels its neck and it it does

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Speaker 3: that thing swans do where they turn around and they

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Speaker 3: like stick their head back under their wing or toward

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Speaker 3: their back. It does that and then it dips its

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Speaker 3: head into the water and catches a fish Althile. This

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Speaker 3: very mysterious little tune plays on hidden bells. Part of

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Speaker 3: the automaton is just a giant music box that plays

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Speaker 3: a selection of several different tunes. So it is an

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Speaker 3: amazing thing to watch in action, especially realizing that this

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Speaker 3: thing was completed in like the seventeen seventies.

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Speaker 1: Yes, I'm looking at a video that you sent me

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Speaker 1: of this swan in action, and yeah, these are very

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Speaker 1: fluid movements here. I was expecting something a lot clunkier.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, something more kind of start and stop jerking up

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Speaker 3: and you know that sort of thing. But no, it's

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Speaker 3: very graceful. And people at the time commented on this

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Speaker 3: like how graceful and lifelike it was. But John Joseph

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Speaker 3: Merlin was not on Sorry.

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Speaker 1: What I just I was just thinking, like, was he

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Speaker 1: still a diplomat at the time, was there anything to do?

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Speaker 3: I don't know if he was. I don't know how

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Speaker 3: long he stayed at diplomat.

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Speaker 1: So because a lot of work evidently went into this, yeah,

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Speaker 1: huge amount.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but Merlin was not only a clock punk silver swancrafter.

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Speaker 3: He was also just an all purpose inventor and designer,

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Speaker 3: both of functional items things like medical devices and measuring instruments,

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Speaker 3: and also bizarre novelties like a real life size mechanical

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Speaker 3: chariot with an automatic horsewhip that he would ride around

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Speaker 3: in Hyde Park.

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Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.

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Speaker 3: In addition, he was a renowned instrument maker. One of

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Speaker 3: the sources I mentioned that post by cellis names Sarah Freiberg.

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Speaker 3: Her introduction to Merlin in writing this piece is actually

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Speaker 3: that she happened to acquire a Baroque cello that he

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Speaker 3: himself made in London in seventeen eighty four. So Merlin

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Speaker 3: was originally probably trained in the art of clockmaking, and

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Speaker 3: he would end up working for some time, beginning in

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Speaker 3: seventeen sixty six, for this British inventor and jeweler named

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Speaker 3: James Cox. Cox was one of the co creators of

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Speaker 3: the Silver Swan. Cox was also sort of a showman,

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Speaker 3: and he operated a museum, or actually I think multiple

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Speaker 3: sort of arcades and museums, one of which was this

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Speaker 3: showroom for mechanical marvels at a street called Spring Gardens

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Speaker 3: in Westminster, and Merlin was Cox's chief mechanic. Merlin went

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Speaker 3: into business for himself in the seventeen seventies. He filed

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Speaker 3: his first patent in seventeen seventy three for a type

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Speaker 3: of Dutch oven that had a built in jack for

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Speaker 3: rotating meat. I've seen this described in some sources as

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Speaker 3: like the first rotisseriy. I don't know that, because I

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Speaker 3: feel like we've talked about earlier rotisseries.

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Speaker 1: I don't know.

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Speaker 3: Maybe it's the first of some kind of rotisseriy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I would venture that it's something like that, and

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Speaker 1: there's no dog involved in here.

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Speaker 3: Now, No, that's what we talked about. Yes, animal operated belve,

386
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Speaker 3: the turn belt. Yes, the turnspit dog, That's what it was.

387
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Speaker 3: And Merlin also patented improvements to musical instrument designs. He

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Speaker 3: did some variations on the harpsichord. He also created all

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Speaker 3: new instruments, which, as far as I can tell, none

390
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Speaker 3: of these really caught on. One example that Freiberg mentions

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Speaker 3: as an instrument called a pentachord, which she describes as

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Speaker 3: a quote small five string cello which is tuned CGDA D.

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Speaker 3: At some point, James Cox, the guy he was working for,

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Speaker 3: James Cox's finances kind of went south and so Merlin

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Speaker 3: decided to set up his own museum. So in seventeen

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Speaker 3: eighty three he acquired a property at Prince's Street. This

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Speaker 3: is also in Westminster, and he called it Merlin's Mechanical Museum.

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Speaker 3: I am exerting extreme self control to not accidentally call

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Speaker 3: this Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders, but I was like,

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Speaker 3: I would start typing that in the note over, but no,

401
00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:03,040
Speaker 3: it was Merlin's Mechanical muse I also have heard it said.

402
00:22:03,080 --> 00:22:05,560
Speaker 3: I think this was by a museum tour guide who

403
00:22:05,640 --> 00:22:07,600
Speaker 3: was showing off the Silver Swan. I think said that

404
00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:11,720
Speaker 3: it was sometimes called Merlin's Cave, But anyway, this place

405
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Speaker 3: was crammed with dazzling automata, weird furniture, and other inventions

406
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Speaker 3: and collectors pieces. Rendell and his blog post mentions a

407
00:22:22,480 --> 00:22:25,040
Speaker 3: bunch of other inventions by Merlin. I just want to

408
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Speaker 3: highlight a few of them. I already alluded to the

409
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Speaker 3: mechanical chariot complete with a whip. This was interesting because

410
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Speaker 3: it also had a type of odometer to measure a

411
00:22:35,280 --> 00:22:39,760
Speaker 3: distance measuring device distance traveled, which that ties into another

412
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Speaker 3: invention episode we've done in the past. We did the

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Speaker 3: odometer at some point, tracing that all the way back

414
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Speaker 3: to inventions in the ancient world. But this had a

415
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Speaker 3: version of an odometer, and Merlin called that odometer the

416
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Speaker 3: way Wise and he would apparently ride this chariot around

417
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Speaker 3: through Hyde Park to kind of advertise his magnificent works.

418
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Speaker 3: He had something else that he created called the gouty chair.

419
00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:07,400
Speaker 3: This was a form of wheelchair, not with large wheels

420
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Speaker 3: on the sides like you would see on modern devices,

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Speaker 3: but it had a set of four smaller wheels near

422
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Speaker 3: the floor I was looking at. You can actually look

423
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Speaker 3: up pictures of this that exist today, and so you

424
00:23:18,960 --> 00:23:21,080
Speaker 3: can see sort of how it was put together. But

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Speaker 3: I couldn't figure out by looking at these or reading

426
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Speaker 3: descriptions exactly how it works. It looks like it's operated

427
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Speaker 3: by a pair of hand turned cranks on the arm rests,

428
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Speaker 3: and I'm not sure how these would both steer and

429
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Speaker 3: propel the chair at the same time. Maybe there's some

430
00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:38,120
Speaker 3: mechanism I'm missing here.

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Speaker 1: Likewise, I can't tell what's going on with like the

432
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Speaker 1: foot pad down there, if it's just for resting your

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Speaker 1: feet on, or if there's some sort of pressure applied there.

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Speaker 3: Could it be like a pedal that maybe propels Maybe yeah,

435
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:52,480
Speaker 3: but there is kind of a footrest below the chair,

436
00:23:52,600 --> 00:23:54,920
Speaker 3: But otherwise it looks like a regular piece of furniture.

437
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:57,840
Speaker 3: It's just affixed with like all these wheels and cranks

438
00:23:57,840 --> 00:23:58,400
Speaker 3: and stuff.

439
00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:01,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, designed for individuals suffering from the gout.

440
00:24:01,880 --> 00:24:04,639
Speaker 3: I'm assume that that's what I assume based on it

441
00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:06,720
Speaker 3: being called the gouty chair, though I assume it could

442
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:09,520
Speaker 3: work for you know, anybody who has mobility issues. And

443
00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:13,520
Speaker 3: Merlin apparently did design a number of devices, like medical

444
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:17,320
Speaker 3: devices and devices to help people with various physical disabilities.

445
00:24:17,840 --> 00:24:22,679
Speaker 3: He designed a some kind of prosthetic gripping devices for

446
00:24:22,760 --> 00:24:27,440
Speaker 3: people without arms, and a set of playing cards which

447
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:30,600
Speaker 3: could be read by the blind. This was presumably some

448
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:33,000
Speaker 3: kind of precursor to braille notation this would have been

449
00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:35,879
Speaker 3: before braille, but had I guess some kind of bumps

450
00:24:35,960 --> 00:24:39,600
Speaker 3: or something that could be felt. And he also invented

451
00:24:39,640 --> 00:24:43,359
Speaker 3: a bunch of types of mechanical moving furniture, or what

452
00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:48,280
Speaker 3: was sometimes called transforming furniture. And this ranged from relatively

453
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 3: mundane creations like you had, like you know, a rotating

454
00:24:51,119 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 3: tea table. Okay, it's not hard to imagine you might

455
00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:58,400
Speaker 3: see things like that today to something that Freiburg includes

456
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:01,159
Speaker 3: in her ride up that was advertised as quote the

457
00:25:01,240 --> 00:25:06,639
Speaker 3: quarteto music cabinet. It contains flutes, violins, and music books

458
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 3: and by touching a spring key it will rise to

459
00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:12,960
Speaker 3: a proper height and form music desks for four performers

460
00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:13,679
Speaker 3: and thin.

461
00:25:13,840 --> 00:25:15,800
Speaker 1: It sounds very futuristic really.

462
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:19,360
Speaker 3: Kind of like adjustable standing desk sort of but for musicians,

463
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:23,520
Speaker 3: and includes like a complex opening and closing cabinet with

464
00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:27,919
Speaker 3: different compartments. He also i think, put together a lot

465
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:31,479
Speaker 3: of different kind of weights and measuring machines and then

466
00:25:31,520 --> 00:25:35,159
Speaker 3: also clocks, including he was a co creator of a

467
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:39,159
Speaker 3: so called perpetual motion clock. This was again with James

468
00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 3: Cox dubious about this one because obviously perpetual motion machines

469
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:49,120
Speaker 3: that doesn't exist in reality. Cox I think claimed this

470
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:52,280
Speaker 3: really was a perpetual motion machine. But from what I've read,

471
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:56,560
Speaker 3: it was powered by a mercury barometer responding to changes

472
00:25:56,600 --> 00:26:01,600
Speaker 3: in atmospheric pressure in order to track the spring. And

473
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:05,119
Speaker 3: of course this would not be a true perpetual motion machine.

474
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 3: It would be requiring this external play.

475
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:10,159
Speaker 1: Otherwise it would be like saying that a windmill is

476
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:11,439
Speaker 1: perpetual motion machine.

477
00:26:11,600 --> 00:26:15,639
Speaker 3: Exactly. Yes. So Merlin was active in the London social

478
00:26:15,680 --> 00:26:18,440
Speaker 3: scene of his time, and he was known as kind

479
00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:22,879
Speaker 3: of weird and flamboyant, and he liked a party. I

480
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:26,959
Speaker 3: came across comments written by the English novelist Fanny Bernie

481
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:30,479
Speaker 3: about Merlin. She spent time with him because her father,

482
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:35,399
Speaker 3: the musicologist Charles Bernie, was good friends with Merlin, so

483
00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:37,760
Speaker 3: she knew him well and she wrote about him as follows.

484
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:40,760
Speaker 3: He is a great favorite in our house. He is

485
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:44,920
Speaker 3: very diverting. Also in conversation, there is a singular simplicity

486
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:48,520
Speaker 3: in his manners. He speaks his opinions upon all subjects

487
00:26:48,560 --> 00:26:52,439
Speaker 3: and about all persons with the most undisguised freedom. He does, not,

488
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 3: though a foreigner, want words. I mean, he does not

489
00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:57,840
Speaker 3: lack words. He had a big vocabulary. He does not

490
00:26:57,960 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 3: want words, but he arranges in pronounces them very comically.

491
00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:05,120
Speaker 3: He is humbly grateful for all civilities that are shown him,

492
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:09,120
Speaker 3: but is warmly and honestly resentful for the least slight.

493
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:11,960
Speaker 1: You know, this is exactly the sort of sort of

494
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:15,399
Speaker 1: dude that you don't want to slide because I feel

495
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:18,879
Speaker 1: like you run a great risk of being reduced in

496
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:21,720
Speaker 1: size and forced to play around with the nutcrackers and the.

497
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:24,679
Speaker 3: Rapt Yeah he's Septimus pretorious or something.

498
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 1: No.

499
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:29,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he was like fun and weird, but apparently

500
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:32,439
Speaker 3: also maybe kind of a big mouth and quick to

501
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:36,960
Speaker 3: take offense. And I've also read in other sources them

502
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:40,439
Speaker 3: other people mentioning this thing. She says that he was

503
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 3: known for having a robust vocabulary, for not a native

504
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:47,760
Speaker 3: English speaker, but for putting words in a weird order.

505
00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:51,639
Speaker 3: When speaking English, so I'm kind of imagining him as Yoda.

506
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:53,760
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It's also weird the way it's his phrase,

507
00:27:53,800 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: because they're like, oh, he's It basically sounds like they're

508
00:27:56,800 --> 00:28:02,639
Speaker 1: making fun of his accent, crediting his vocabulary and grasped

509
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:03,720
Speaker 1: with the English language.

510
00:28:04,040 --> 00:28:06,879
Speaker 3: This is so funny because he's conforming to what I

511
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:10,760
Speaker 3: would think of as a later storytelling archetype, like the

512
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 3: eccentric foreign professor with a strange accent who is like

513
00:28:17,280 --> 00:28:21,119
Speaker 3: an inventor of curiosities. But this has got to be

514
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:24,840
Speaker 3: before I thought such an archetype existed, So I don't know.

515
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:27,359
Speaker 3: Maybe it's just a coincidence, or could it be based

516
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:28,880
Speaker 3: on this guy in anyway, I don't know.

517
00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:32,400
Speaker 1: I mean, it would not surprise me. We've seen other

518
00:28:32,440 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: examples of various historical individuals having a great deal of

519
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: influence over how various stereotypes are interpreted.

520
00:28:41,800 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 3: But yeah, so anyway, he connected to a bunch of

521
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:47,400
Speaker 3: famous people in his time. Johann Christian Bach, the son

522
00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:51,520
Speaker 3: of the famous composer Johann Sebastian Bach, apparently performed instruments

523
00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:57,440
Speaker 3: performed on instruments made by Merlin and another very important

524
00:28:57,560 --> 00:29:00,120
Speaker 3: historical connection this is mentioned in that blog post by

525
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 3: Rendell is that there's a first hand account of a

526
00:29:03,760 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 3: visit to Merlin's museum by a young Charles Babbage, who

527
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:12,160
Speaker 3: would go on years later to invent the very historically

528
00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 3: important mechanical computing device known as the difference engine. Babbage's

529
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:20,600
Speaker 3: mechanical computer designs and concepts laid the groundwork for the

530
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 3: electronic computers that would come to be the basis of

531
00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 3: you know, most or maybe all of today's digital technology.

532
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:32,280
Speaker 3: So Babbage wrote about this experience of going to Merlin's cave.

533
00:29:33,240 --> 00:29:35,719
Speaker 3: He says that Merlin took him on a tour of

534
00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:38,800
Speaker 3: like a private gallery to show him like the special projects,

535
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 3: and Babbage says, quote, there were two uncovered female figures

536
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:47,160
Speaker 3: of silver, about twelve inches high, and he describes one

537
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 3: of the figures as an admirable dan Seuss, meaning a

538
00:29:50,400 --> 00:29:54,040
Speaker 3: female ballerina, and says she had a silver bird perched

539
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 3: on a fore finger of her right hand, and then

540
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:58,800
Speaker 3: the bird would move, it would shake its tail and

541
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 3: flap its wings and also opening close its little beak.

542
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:05,360
Speaker 3: And then of the silver ballerina herself, he said, quote,

543
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:09,360
Speaker 3: the lady attitudinized in a most fascinating manner. Her eyes

544
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:14,360
Speaker 3: were full of imagination and irresistible. And Babbage was so

545
00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 3: struck by these little mechanical objects, these sort of precursors

546
00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:21,840
Speaker 3: to robots, that he would come back and buy the

547
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:24,480
Speaker 3: exhibits in eighteen thirty four, after Merlin's death.

548
00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 1: What a fascinating individual, so very much part of a

549
00:30:28,640 --> 00:30:34,240
Speaker 1: very crucial technological ecosystem of the day. And to be clear,

550
00:30:34,320 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 1: like you pointed out, not just creating sheer novelties, but

551
00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 1: just seemingly constantly innovating and like I can only imagine,

552
00:30:42,360 --> 00:30:46,959
Speaker 1: like following every idea, good or bad, useful or just

553
00:30:47,280 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 1: entertaining that seems to enter into his head.

554
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:52,360
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, you get the idea of just phrenetic energy,

555
00:30:52,760 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 3: constant moving about and doing different things, and being a

556
00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:59,640
Speaker 3: perhaps touchy but also beloved weirdo of the time.

557
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:00,520
Speaker 1: Nice.

558
00:31:01,280 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 3: So anyway, onto Merlin's roller skates episode. This is back

559
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 3: back to the main event here. So one of John

560
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:13,120
Speaker 3: Joseph Merlin's now most famous inventions was actually one of

561
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 3: the simplest, especially when you compare it to like the

562
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:20,160
Speaker 3: intricate clockwork ballet dancers and the silver avians and all

563
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:23,960
Speaker 3: that and that was the roller skate. Now again, was

564
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 3: Merlin the first person ever to put wheels on a

565
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:30,960
Speaker 3: show on a shoe? Very doubtful. In her article, Freiberg

566
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 3: mentions that Merlin quote probably improved skates which first appeared

567
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:40,320
Speaker 3: in Holland in around seventeen hundred, but there is no

568
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:44,560
Speaker 3: like credited inventor or further detail of those earlier models.

569
00:31:44,800 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 3: It's just like some things like this probably existed and

570
00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 3: he improved them. But again, Turner and Zeidman say he's

571
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:56,000
Speaker 3: the earliest recorded inventor of a roller skate. So one

572
00:31:56,040 --> 00:31:59,520
Speaker 3: of the things that makes Merlin's model historically interesting is that,

573
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:06,200
Speaker 3: ever the showman, Merlin staged a wild public demonstration of

574
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 3: his invention at a fancy masquerade ball around seventeen sixty,

575
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:15,080
Speaker 3: and it went extremely badly. An account of this incident

576
00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:18,640
Speaker 3: appears in a book called A Concert Room and Orchestra

577
00:32:18,840 --> 00:32:23,680
Speaker 3: Anecdotes written by Thomas Busby in eighteen five, and Buzzby

578
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:27,640
Speaker 3: tells the story as follows. Speaking about Merlin, quote, one

579
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:31,320
Speaker 3: of his ingenious novelties was a pair of skates. This

580
00:32:31,440 --> 00:32:34,680
Speaker 3: is spelled skaies.

581
00:32:35,040 --> 00:32:36,240
Speaker 1: That's sounds about right.

582
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 3: A pair of skates contrived to run on wheels supplied

583
00:32:42,560 --> 00:32:46,040
Speaker 3: with these and a violin he mixed in the motley

584
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:50,160
Speaker 3: group of one of Missus Cowley's masquerades at Carlisle House.

585
00:32:50,640 --> 00:32:54,120
Speaker 3: When not having provided the means of retarding his velocity

586
00:32:54,600 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 3: or commanding its direction, he impelled himself against a mirror

587
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:01,800
Speaker 3: of more than five hundred pound owns value, dashed it

588
00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:05,840
Speaker 3: to atoms, broke his instrument to pieces, and wounded himself

589
00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:09,280
Speaker 3: most severely. Oh my goodness, don't you hate when that happens.

590
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:12,600
Speaker 3: So he's like, I have invented wheels for feet. I

591
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:14,920
Speaker 3: have made wheels for feet. Everybody's got to see this.

592
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna roll around the masquerade. Everybody's got their

593
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:20,520
Speaker 3: little their masks and their fancy costumes. I'm gonna play

594
00:33:20,560 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 3: the violin while riding on these things. But he forgot

595
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:26,160
Speaker 3: to put brakes in them, and so he crashes into

596
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:29,240
Speaker 3: a mirror, shatters it to pieces or to atoms, in

597
00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:32,760
Speaker 3: the words of Busby, and and everybody's I guess, I

598
00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:34,880
Speaker 3: don't know. Were they laughing at him, were they mad?

599
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:37,520
Speaker 3: Were they sorry for him? It doesn't say what the

600
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:38,320
Speaker 3: crowd's reaction on.

601
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:41,320
Speaker 1: I mean, given that he's also bleeding, perhaps severely at

602
00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 1: this point. I mean, I can only imagine the stun silence.

603
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:50,240
Speaker 3: Yeah. So to note Merlin's designed for these skates, it

604
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 3: sounds like it was a The wheels are an inline orientation,

605
00:33:53,640 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 3: so not side by side, and two wheels each two

606
00:33:56,240 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 3: wheels per foot. I don't I'm not a skater myself,

607
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:02,400
Speaker 3: so I don't know. Sounds like that wouldn't be enough.

608
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 3: It sounds like you want more wheels maybe, I don't know.

609
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I some of the the the innovations that

610
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:13,560
Speaker 1: would come after Merlin, but before proper what we would

611
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:16,680
Speaker 1: think of as you know, more contemporary roller skates tended

612
00:34:16,719 --> 00:34:19,319
Speaker 1: to have I think at least three wheels. Yeah.

613
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:22,479
Speaker 3: But again this is this is important. Merlin's roller skate

614
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:26,680
Speaker 3: design did not include brakes, no toe brakes, and no back,

615
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 3: no heel breaks, so there was no built in ability

616
00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:35,239
Speaker 3: to slow down or stop or really change direction as

617
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:38,440
Speaker 3: it says. So yeah, it was it was more. This

618
00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 3: strikes me as more of like an idea than something

619
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:44,120
Speaker 3: really like honed in and made practical.

620
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:49,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, very much a novelty that he was willing

621
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:54,040
Speaker 1: and excited to pursue. There in front of everybody. Again,

622
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:56,479
Speaker 1: this is seems like the kind of individual who would

623
00:34:56,480 --> 00:35:05,120
Speaker 1: just follow any mechanical fantasy that seemed to enter his head.

624
00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:14,759
Speaker 3: So that is the John Joseph Merlin roller skating experience.

625
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:17,759
Speaker 3: His model obviously would not be the last one, and

626
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 3: there were many innovations that would come along in the

627
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:24,040
Speaker 3: following decades. People would keep making different kinds of little

628
00:35:24,160 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 3: roller skates, and roller skating did sort of seem to

629
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:30,320
Speaker 3: catch on going into the nineteenth century.

630
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:35,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, Merlin's roller skating story is clearly the best. It's

631
00:35:35,080 --> 00:35:38,920
Speaker 1: the most entertaining. I think the basic reality is that

632
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:44,120
Speaker 1: a lot of the subsequent and probably previous roller skating

633
00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:47,720
Speaker 1: invention stories were pretty boring in or lost to history.

634
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:50,160
Speaker 1: Somebody made this novelty device that you strap under your

635
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:52,839
Speaker 1: feet so you can skate around sort of like an

636
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:56,640
Speaker 1: ice skater, but with nowhere near as much speed, power

637
00:35:56,760 --> 00:36:01,320
Speaker 1: or control, and then people just forgot that these inventions existed,

638
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:05,400
Speaker 1: or they forgot about the inventor. But yeah, they were available.

639
00:36:06,719 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 1: And this is where we come back around to James Plimpton,

640
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:13,960
Speaker 1: who have nineteen twenty eight through nineteen eleven, an American

641
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:18,600
Speaker 1: inventor who this is one of those invention stories or

642
00:36:18,640 --> 00:36:22,600
Speaker 1: innovator stories. That is also not that exciting because it's

643
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 1: somebody like seeing a way that can improve upon something,

644
00:36:26,280 --> 00:36:29,520
Speaker 1: making that improvement and then being able to own it

645
00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:35,000
Speaker 1: and sell it and also litigate it. Those are the

646
00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:38,040
Speaker 1: I mean, those are also it's part of invention that

647
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:41,279
Speaker 1: s You've touched on stories related to that before on

648
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:44,560
Speaker 1: the show. But I mean, it's it's less magical when

649
00:36:44,560 --> 00:36:47,640
Speaker 1: it's about just suing people for infringing on your copyright.

650
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:51,520
Speaker 3: That's a lot of history. There's, yeah, pursuing intellectual property things,

651
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:54,279
Speaker 3: or just figuring out a way to market something so

652
00:36:54,280 --> 00:36:56,680
Speaker 3: that it catches on, or finding a way to make

653
00:36:56,760 --> 00:37:00,879
Speaker 3: something to make a design profitable, that's a big thing too.

654
00:37:01,239 --> 00:37:03,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, but still, I mean, still, the story of Plimpton

655
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:07,720
Speaker 1: is interesting in it's own right. He had at least

656
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:11,200
Speaker 1: one prior invention, because you know, to call yourself an inventor,

657
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:14,719
Speaker 1: you need at least one or two in the in

658
00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:21,000
Speaker 1: the portfolio, he invented the eighteen fifty three Plimpton cabinet bed, which,

659
00:37:21,040 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 1: according to the Massachusetts Historical Society's Beehive blog, was seemingly

660
00:37:25,200 --> 00:37:27,279
Speaker 1: something he invented due to a practical need in his

661
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:30,720
Speaker 1: own home, probably due to his own marriage the year earlier.

662
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:33,120
Speaker 1: I think like at this point maybe they had a

663
00:37:33,200 --> 00:37:36,440
Speaker 1: kid on the way. It was his first major invention,

664
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:39,240
Speaker 1: and this is another case where he did not invent

665
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:42,239
Speaker 1: the cabinet bed, a bed that folds up into a cabinet,

666
00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:44,799
Speaker 1: but he came up with a variation on it that

667
00:37:44,840 --> 00:37:47,000
Speaker 1: I'm to understand was aimed at requiring like a little

668
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:50,400
Speaker 1: less effort to fold and unfold, and so kind of

669
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:52,560
Speaker 1: like Merlin. You know, Plimpton seems like he was one

670
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:56,359
Speaker 1: of these individuals who was, you know, always thinking about

671
00:37:56,360 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 1: ways to improve on an given device, though perhaps I

672
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:02,279
Speaker 1: mean more than perhaps I think, certainly with more of

673
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:07,279
Speaker 1: an entrepreneurial spirit to things as opposed to just more

674
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:15,000
Speaker 1: of a sheer exuberance for invention and mechanisms. And so

675
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:20,439
Speaker 1: basically around eighteen sixty, according to the Beehive, Plimpton takes ill,

676
00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:23,200
Speaker 1: goes to the doctor, and the doctor says, I think

677
00:38:23,239 --> 00:38:25,440
Speaker 1: you should take up some physical activity. I think you

678
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:28,840
Speaker 1: should take up ice skating. And Plimpton, being a Northerner,

679
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:31,239
Speaker 1: would have been familiar with ice skating and you know,

680
00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 1: maybe even had some history with it, and maybe it

681
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:35,440
Speaker 1: was falling back on something he did as a kid.

682
00:38:35,480 --> 00:38:38,279
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. We don't have all the details, but

683
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:41,040
Speaker 1: what happens when summer rolls around is you may find

684
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:45,120
Speaker 1: yourself unable to ice skate anymore, and so keen to

685
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:49,200
Speaker 1: continue his wellness exercises, he bought himself a pair of

686
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:53,560
Speaker 1: roller skates or what was passing for roller skates at

687
00:38:53,560 --> 00:38:57,360
Speaker 1: the time, and proceeded to think about ways to improve

688
00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:00,200
Speaker 1: upon them. Because much like we were talking about with

689
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:04,520
Speaker 1: Merlin's roller skates, these would have been very fixed, strapped

690
00:39:04,560 --> 00:39:07,239
Speaker 1: onto your boots or your shoes. They allowed you to

691
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:12,040
Speaker 1: go forwards or backwards, but not take any turns. And

692
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:14,000
Speaker 1: also I think there may have been some challenges with

693
00:39:14,040 --> 00:39:17,880
Speaker 1: stopping when you needed to stop. But yeah, there there

694
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:21,040
Speaker 1: were various versions of this. I read that there are

695
00:39:21,080 --> 00:39:23,840
Speaker 1: some early roller skates attributed to a Dutchman by the

696
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:28,319
Speaker 1: name of Hans Brinner from the same century, but these

697
00:39:28,680 --> 00:39:31,560
Speaker 1: are largely considered not true roller skates because you could

698
00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:34,399
Speaker 1: not turn in them. I mean, think about a roller

699
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 1: skating rink. Part of the whole field of going to

700
00:39:36,080 --> 00:39:38,360
Speaker 1: build roller skating rink is going to go around in

701
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:41,239
Speaker 1: a circle. Over and over again, or at least in

702
00:39:41,280 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 1: an oval. So at this point, again, to be clear,

703
00:39:46,040 --> 00:39:50,760
Speaker 1: commercially available roller skates were very much around, and we've

704
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:57,800
Speaker 1: already I think firmly established some early examples of things

705
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:00,840
Speaker 1: like roller skates, and we speculated on even the ancient

706
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:03,560
Speaker 1: existence of things like roller skates. But I know you

707
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:07,600
Speaker 1: and I kept both both of us kept coming across

708
00:40:08,040 --> 00:40:12,440
Speaker 1: mentions of a seventeen forty three London theater production in

709
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:18,279
Speaker 1: which actors had roller skates on simulating ice skating for

710
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: theatrical purposes.

711
00:40:19,719 --> 00:40:22,960
Speaker 3: Yeah. I came across mention of this use in a

712
00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:26,399
Speaker 3: theater production in seventeen forty three in a j Store

713
00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:28,680
Speaker 3: Daily article that I think you and I both read,

714
00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:32,759
Speaker 3: But I had some questions about that. Did you say

715
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:35,120
Speaker 3: you were able to dig into what this claim was

716
00:40:35,160 --> 00:40:36,160
Speaker 3: about the play?

717
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:39,520
Speaker 1: I dug into it more with no real satisfying answers.

718
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:42,480
Speaker 1: So I would say, first and foremost kind of falling

719
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 1: along with things we've been discussing already, the idea that

720
00:40:46,480 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: in the year seventeen forty three or even earlier or

721
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:54,120
Speaker 1: certainly later, the idea that somebody staging a production of

722
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:58,040
Speaker 1: some sort in London or elsewhere could have said, Hey,

723
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:03,400
Speaker 1: what if in order to weate the theatrical illusion of

724
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:06,799
Speaker 1: ice skating, what if we used wheely skates instead? What

725
00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:09,360
Speaker 1: if we did that? Could we pull that off? It

726
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 1: seems perfectly reasonable to assume folks at least tried this out.

727
00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:17,239
Speaker 1: If not, you know, perfected to some degree and you know,

728
00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:19,520
Speaker 1: did an entire series of performances.

729
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:23,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, but what is the origin of this claim? I

730
00:41:23,080 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 3: think that was the thing I was having a hard

731
00:41:24,560 --> 00:41:25,279
Speaker 3: time figuring out.

732
00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, as far as I can tell, looking at various

733
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 1: sources that mentioned this, I just can't find any like

734
00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:36,480
Speaker 1: concrete details, and the details kind of vary too, Like,

735
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:40,359
Speaker 1: for instance, the j Store Daily article mentions something about

736
00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:41,960
Speaker 1: how it might have been a production of a Tom

737
00:41:42,040 --> 00:41:45,080
Speaker 1: Lockwood play, And then I try and research that, and like,

738
00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:48,560
Speaker 1: who's Tom Lockwood? No evidence of such a playwright as

739
00:41:48,560 --> 00:41:49,839
Speaker 1: far as I could tell, Or maybe it's a really

740
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:52,840
Speaker 1: obscure playwright or lost play right, or it could be

741
00:41:52,880 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 1: an error of record keeping in history. I found another

742
00:41:58,080 --> 00:42:01,560
Speaker 1: reference to this idea, you know, a nineteen ninety nine

743
00:42:01,719 --> 00:42:06,200
Speaker 1: article by Gilbert Nordon Passing Fashions but no sustainable market

744
00:42:06,440 --> 00:42:10,800
Speaker 1: A history of roller skating in Austria before nineteen fourteen. Oh, okay,

745
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:14,239
Speaker 1: And it states that this was a performance at the

746
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:18,720
Speaker 1: old Drury Lane Theater, which is still there in London's

747
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:21,400
Speaker 1: West End. And this article states that it was a

748
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:25,279
Speaker 1: play by Thomas Hood, or I should state, I should

749
00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:28,640
Speaker 1: stress at least a Thomas Hood, but certainly not the

750
00:42:28,680 --> 00:42:31,760
Speaker 1: Thomas Hood who lives seventeen ninety nine through eighteen forty five.

751
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:35,759
Speaker 1: Nor could it possibly be his son Tom Hood, who

752
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:40,120
Speaker 1: lived eighteen thirty five through eighteen seventy four. So that

753
00:42:40,239 --> 00:42:43,040
Speaker 1: we've run into a similar situation here like this, there's

754
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:45,000
Speaker 1: some sort of airror here. If it was a Tom

755
00:42:45,120 --> 00:42:48,200
Speaker 1: or Thomas Hood play, it had to be later, or

756
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 1: if it was in this given year of seventeen forty three,

757
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:54,360
Speaker 1: it had to be a different playwright or a different

758
00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:56,080
Speaker 1: theater and so forth.

759
00:42:56,239 --> 00:42:58,239
Speaker 3: I don't want to presume, because I was never able

760
00:42:58,239 --> 00:42:59,800
Speaker 3: to wrap my head around what the source of the

761
00:42:59,840 --> 00:43:02,160
Speaker 3: case confusion was here. But I wonder if this the

762
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:05,399
Speaker 3: error is just that this was not actually a play

763
00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 3: in the eighteenth century but in the nineteenth century. If

764
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:10,120
Speaker 3: it was the eighteen forties.

765
00:43:09,760 --> 00:43:12,880
Speaker 1: That would streamline things a lot, because then it could

766
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:18,160
Speaker 1: be a Tom or Thomas hood play, and even more importantly,

767
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:23,560
Speaker 1: it would place it alongside a more well documented case

768
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:27,120
Speaker 1: of roller skates being used to create the theatrical illusion

769
00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:30,400
Speaker 1: of ice skates, that being an eighteen forty nine French

770
00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:35,040
Speaker 1: opera production of Meyer Beers the Prophet, which featured performers

771
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:35,920
Speaker 1: on roller skates.

772
00:43:36,160 --> 00:43:39,240
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, that would make sense. But again we can't,

773
00:43:39,280 --> 00:43:42,880
Speaker 3: so we can't adjudicate this question. But this seems possible

774
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:43,120
Speaker 3: to me.

775
00:43:43,560 --> 00:43:47,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the reality is, at some point in history, yes,

776
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:51,520
Speaker 1: roller skates were used for perhaps the first time on

777
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:54,600
Speaker 1: the stage to create the illusion of ice skating.

778
00:43:55,040 --> 00:43:58,840
Speaker 3: But okay, so back to the domain of business.

779
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:02,600
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, Plumpton comes around, he's trying these out. The

780
00:44:02,640 --> 00:44:04,879
Speaker 1: skates that he's trying are going to be crude, They're

781
00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:09,160
Speaker 1: going to be awkward. Apparently, you apparently some of these

782
00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:13,200
Speaker 1: you could make turns in, but with difficulty, nothing close

783
00:44:13,239 --> 00:44:15,880
Speaker 1: to the maneuverability of ice skating. So, especially if you

784
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:19,680
Speaker 1: were hoping to trade in your ice skates for roller

785
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:23,279
Speaker 1: skates during the summer and have anything like the same experience,

786
00:44:24,120 --> 00:44:27,759
Speaker 1: you were in for a great deal of disappointment. I

787
00:44:27,760 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 1: was reading about some of these earlier commercially available skates,

788
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:35,799
Speaker 1: and according to the Birth of the roller Skate by

789
00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:40,960
Speaker 1: John Exell twenty eleven, on the engineer, an eighteen nineteen

790
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:44,200
Speaker 1: patented roller skate, the work of French and Ventnor m

791
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 1: Petebled had metal wheels and were I don't know if

792
00:44:50,640 --> 00:44:53,400
Speaker 1: this criticism holds true, but there were arguments that you

793
00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:56,520
Speaker 1: could barely lift your foot with these on, and that

794
00:44:56,640 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 1: on top of it, they were so ugly that the

795
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:03,960
Speaker 1: quote or sex would never wear them. Joe I included

796
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:06,279
Speaker 1: an image here of this particular skate. I think you'll

797
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 1: agree it neither looks tremendously ugly or really all that heavy.

798
00:45:11,719 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 1: But maybe it was actually heavy.

799
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:15,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe it's made of tungsten.

800
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:19,920
Speaker 1: Did the wheels are supposedly metal? I can't tell to

801
00:45:19,960 --> 00:45:21,719
Speaker 1: what extent they are in this image.

802
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:24,400
Speaker 3: But solid metal, like not even hollow?

803
00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:26,040
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah maybe so.

804
00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:30,520
Speaker 3: Well yeah, so this would have been a design that

805
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:34,400
Speaker 3: comes well after Merlin but well before Plimpton, kind of

806
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:36,319
Speaker 3: in between, in the middle between them.

807
00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:40,040
Speaker 1: Another example would be the three wheel juvenile inline skate

808
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:43,120
Speaker 1: that was the dates of these I found like eighteen

809
00:45:43,160 --> 00:45:46,799
Speaker 1: sixty through eighteen sixty three, included an image here for you, Joe,

810
00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:49,920
Speaker 1: and basically it is what it sounds like. Instead of

811
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:53,920
Speaker 1: two wheels in line strapped beneath a shoe or boot

812
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:56,720
Speaker 1: like we were referencing earlier, this would be three. Yeah.

813
00:45:57,160 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 1: So this is what Plimpton was working with, and his

814
00:45:59,800 --> 00:46:03,520
Speaker 1: main adjustments to the skates of his time were just

815
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:06,799
Speaker 1: largely related to the exact layout of the wheels. He

816
00:46:06,840 --> 00:46:11,200
Speaker 1: went with a quad wheel or rocker arrangement that was

817
00:46:11,320 --> 00:46:14,840
Speaker 1: more comfortable to wear and far easier to turn, and

818
00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:17,440
Speaker 1: for the most part, this is the same design you

819
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 1: find on roller skates today. There have been all sorts

820
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 1: of minor adjustments to this, but essentially it is accurate

821
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:29,040
Speaker 1: to say that Plimpton innovates slash invents the modern roller

822
00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:33,200
Speaker 1: skate with his patent, and it largely remains the way

823
00:46:33,239 --> 00:46:37,360
Speaker 1: people were skating off of the ice until around nineteen

824
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:40,160
Speaker 1: seventy nine, and that's when there's an attempt to sort

825
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:44,040
Speaker 1: of redo the ice to roller transfer, generating a modern

826
00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:47,280
Speaker 1: roller skate based on modern ice skates, and this becomes

827
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:49,360
Speaker 1: the inline skate or roller blade.

828
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:53,000
Speaker 3: Okay, so the history of roller skates really does start.

829
00:46:53,239 --> 00:46:56,719
Speaker 3: The early designs are pretty much all inline. They're the

830
00:46:56,840 --> 00:47:00,560
Speaker 3: roller blade, and then we get the innovation of the

831
00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:06,520
Speaker 3: quad design, the two axles each with two wheels in

832
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:09,279
Speaker 3: the orientation like a car. This solves a lot of

833
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:11,440
Speaker 3: problems with roller skates, and then we find ways to

834
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:14,000
Speaker 3: go back to the inline design and make it more

835
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 3: comfortable and desirable.

836
00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:18,840
Speaker 1: Yeah. This really got me to thinking about the way

837
00:47:18,880 --> 00:47:22,239
Speaker 1: that we might think about inventions based on our own

838
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:26,200
Speaker 1: sort of vocabulary of technology. Like, growing up, I kind

839
00:47:26,200 --> 00:47:28,719
Speaker 1: of thought of a roller skate as a car or

840
00:47:28,719 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 1: a toy car that is on the bottom of your foot.

841
00:47:31,640 --> 00:47:34,360
Speaker 1: But as we've been discussing, the roller skate was invented

842
00:47:34,400 --> 00:47:36,880
Speaker 1: as a playoff of the ice skate, and it for

843
00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:39,600
Speaker 1: the most part, was not created with the idea of

844
00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:43,279
Speaker 1: strapping small carriages to the bottom of your feet. Yeah.

845
00:47:43,400 --> 00:47:45,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, A lot of times when we're thinking about the

846
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:50,760
Speaker 3: history of technology, we like retrospectively, we don't have access

847
00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:54,720
Speaker 3: to the same chain of a visual analogies that people

848
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:57,959
Speaker 3: were using when they were working prospectively. Does that make sense?

849
00:47:58,040 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is all all fascinating when you think,

850
00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:04,120
Speaker 1: like again, I think back to being a kid in

851
00:48:04,160 --> 00:48:06,640
Speaker 1: the nineties seeing roller blades and thinking, well, that's brilliant.

852
00:48:06,640 --> 00:48:10,200
Speaker 1: They're making a roller skate like an ice skate, but

853
00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:12,400
Speaker 1: of course this was always part of the equation.

854
00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:15,000
Speaker 3: And the box looks like as lasers on it.

855
00:48:17,080 --> 00:48:18,920
Speaker 1: I love this quote, by the way, from the Beehive.

856
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:21,680
Speaker 1: That kind of sums up what happened next for Plimpton.

857
00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:24,640
Speaker 1: Quote James Plimpton spent the rest of his life selling,

858
00:48:24,719 --> 00:48:28,800
Speaker 1: improving and litigating his patent. So I mean, no shame,

859
00:48:29,280 --> 00:48:33,800
Speaker 1: he is a businessman. But I was reading various accounts

860
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:35,759
Speaker 1: of it, you know, in the language of the day,

861
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:42,279
Speaker 1: talking about protecting the roller skaters in Europe by litigating

862
00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:45,239
Speaker 1: various patents, you know, like we're looking after you. We

863
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:47,120
Speaker 1: want to make sure that when you roller skate, you're

864
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:48,840
Speaker 1: using real Plimpton skates.

865
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:53,440
Speaker 3: I don't know why, but this is made funnier by

866
00:48:53,480 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 3: I looked him up earlier and I know what James

867
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:59,279
Speaker 3: Plimpton looks like, and he's not exactly what I expected.

868
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:01,960
Speaker 3: He looked kind of like he's like Garth Hudson of

869
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:06,360
Speaker 3: the band, like a big beard and somehow kind of

870
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:07,200
Speaker 3: looks like an artist.

871
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:10,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, hard to imagine him on roller skates just looking

872
00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:12,640
Speaker 1: at some of these images. But I mean that's awesome.

873
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:17,160
Speaker 1: So roller skating becomes quite the hit, obviously, and you

874
00:49:17,280 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 1: end up with these various phases where things really pick up.

875
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:24,080
Speaker 1: They including the eighteen eighties. Oh man, I was. I

876
00:49:24,160 --> 00:49:27,399
Speaker 1: was looking around at some, you know, contemporary writings from

877
00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:31,800
Speaker 1: this time about about roller skating, and I ran across

878
00:49:31,800 --> 00:49:36,680
Speaker 1: an eighteen seventy six book titled Rinks and Rollers by J. A. Harwood,

879
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:39,279
Speaker 1: And I want to read just a bit from this

880
00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:43,480
Speaker 1: because it's it touches on what on some some some

881
00:49:44,040 --> 00:49:48,000
Speaker 1: thoughts at that point regarding the future of roller skating. Okay,

882
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:53,200
Speaker 1: how long will this rage for rinking last? Everyone is asking,

883
00:49:53,239 --> 00:49:56,680
Speaker 1: to which the reply generally is, except from rink owners, Oh,

884
00:49:56,719 --> 00:50:00,040
Speaker 1: it will soon wear itself out. For my part, I

885
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:02,560
Speaker 1: doubt that it will die away so rapidly, and think

886
00:50:02,560 --> 00:50:05,400
Speaker 1: that rinking is destined to take a permanent place among

887
00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:10,719
Speaker 1: the institutions of civilized society. Rinking drinking. Yeah, and the

888
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:16,040
Speaker 1: name ranking did not stick, thankfully, but I think that

889
00:50:16,200 --> 00:50:18,560
Speaker 1: the idea that it becomes a part of civilized society

890
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:22,880
Speaker 1: absolutely does stick. He continues, but probably there will be

891
00:50:22,960 --> 00:50:25,520
Speaker 1: some abatement in the present fever in a short time,

892
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:30,040
Speaker 1: and proprietors will find it expedient to reduce their prices

893
00:50:30,040 --> 00:50:34,680
Speaker 1: of admission. These violent beginnings have violent ends. People skate

894
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: too much now, both for their purses and constitutions, and

895
00:50:38,320 --> 00:50:42,399
Speaker 1: rink proprietors grow too rich. If prices were reduced, there

896
00:50:42,400 --> 00:50:44,279
Speaker 1: would not be such a desire on the part of

897
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:46,600
Speaker 1: the public to have its money was worth, even at

898
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:49,880
Speaker 1: the cost of excessive bodily fatigue.

899
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:53,360
Speaker 3: Oh man, it's not good for your bodies to skate

900
00:50:53,440 --> 00:50:53,919
Speaker 3: this much.

901
00:50:54,719 --> 00:50:57,759
Speaker 1: And so basically, as he continued to explain that the

902
00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:00,600
Speaker 1: rinks were not open long enough and so people were

903
00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:03,640
Speaker 1: just really getting it during the two hours that they

904
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:05,920
Speaker 1: could skate, and he was like, this is not healthy.

905
00:51:05,960 --> 00:51:08,439
Speaker 1: We need skating rinks to be open longer. It needs

906
00:51:08,440 --> 00:51:13,239
Speaker 1: to be cheaper because people cannot physically or monetarily keep

907
00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 1: up with their desire to go ranking.

908
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:19,239
Speaker 3: I love that doesn't make sense in like three ways.

909
00:51:20,080 --> 00:51:25,200
Speaker 1: But you know, a little snapshot into roller skating fads

910
00:51:25,200 --> 00:51:40,240
Speaker 1: and enthusiasm of the time now. I also was looking

911
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:41,640
Speaker 1: into this a little bit. I thought it was interesting

912
00:51:41,640 --> 00:51:44,160
Speaker 1: to think about roller skating in combination with another major

913
00:51:44,680 --> 00:51:48,440
Speaker 1: invention of this time period, that being the moving picture

914
00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:53,680
Speaker 1: and the earliest depiction of roller skating on film is

915
00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:57,319
Speaker 1: generally considered to be nineteen sixteen's The Rink starring the

916
00:51:57,320 --> 00:51:58,640
Speaker 1: one and only Charlie Chaplin.

917
00:51:58,719 --> 00:52:02,680
Speaker 3: Okay, so not incidental. This is about This is about skating.

918
00:52:02,600 --> 00:52:04,640
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, the whole the whole thing is. And you

919
00:52:04,680 --> 00:52:07,280
Speaker 1: can find examples of this. They have it on YouTube,

920
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:11,799
Speaker 1: probably on Wikipedia, certainly on on archive dot org. But yeah,

921
00:52:11,800 --> 00:52:14,800
Speaker 1: the whole thing takes place on a skating rink. You

922
00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:18,560
Speaker 1: can watch Charlie Chaplin and the supporting characters skate about,

923
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:22,759
Speaker 1: and you know, it's entirely possible. There was some other,

924
00:52:23,760 --> 00:52:26,799
Speaker 1: you know, very short silent film project that involves someone

925
00:52:26,880 --> 00:52:29,600
Speaker 1: skating in the same way that there are various old

926
00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 1: silent films of people doing other things, you know, running around,

927
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:36,480
Speaker 1: riding a horse and so forth. But as far as

928
00:52:36,520 --> 00:52:38,320
Speaker 1: I know, it was lost. If such a thing.

929
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:40,520
Speaker 3: Existed, lots of earlier films were lost.

930
00:52:40,800 --> 00:52:44,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's also a nineteen nineteen silent film titled Don't

931
00:52:44,719 --> 00:52:47,400
Speaker 1: Shove starring Harry Lloyd. And this one, this one was

932
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:49,799
Speaker 1: likely inspired by by The Rink.

933
00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:53,000
Speaker 3: I'm to understand, is it like a public service announcement

934
00:52:53,120 --> 00:52:54,280
Speaker 3: or is this just what it's called.

935
00:52:54,640 --> 00:52:57,319
Speaker 1: It's just another funny, that's all it is. It's just

936
00:52:57,520 --> 00:53:01,239
Speaker 1: another comedy. I think, don't shove, because there is some

937
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:04,040
Speaker 1: shoving that occurs, and this was probably a rule, you know,

938
00:53:04,680 --> 00:53:06,960
Speaker 1: when you went to the rink, rinkers don't shove each other.

939
00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:09,360
Speaker 1: Not sure if they were still calling each other ringers

940
00:53:09,400 --> 00:53:12,720
Speaker 1: at that point. And then according to Turner Classic Movies,

941
00:53:13,000 --> 00:53:14,680
Speaker 1: a couple of other key moments in the history of

942
00:53:14,760 --> 00:53:17,799
Speaker 1: roller skates cinema include Modern Times from nineteen thirty six

943
00:53:18,040 --> 00:53:20,600
Speaker 1: and Shall We Dance from thirty seven. And I think

944
00:53:20,600 --> 00:53:23,799
Speaker 1: it's kind of potentially telling here because even in these

945
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:27,680
Speaker 1: just few cinematic examples here we maybe get an idea

946
00:53:28,040 --> 00:53:32,240
Speaker 1: of some of the ups and downs of roller skating popularity.

947
00:53:32,920 --> 00:53:37,160
Speaker 1: You know, we see there's like a for instance, another

948
00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:39,800
Speaker 1: examples in nineteen thirty eight black and white popeye short

949
00:53:39,880 --> 00:53:42,960
Speaker 1: titled A Date to Skate. And at this point we're

950
00:53:43,040 --> 00:53:45,080
Speaker 1: very much into the period of the Second World War,

951
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:49,520
Speaker 1: during which skating experienced i yet another boom period as

952
00:53:49,520 --> 00:53:52,320
Speaker 1: people in the US looked for distractions from global events.

953
00:53:53,160 --> 00:53:56,800
Speaker 1: And so we see and also I found it interesting

954
00:53:56,800 --> 00:53:58,640
Speaker 1: that we see some of the early roots of roller

955
00:53:58,680 --> 00:54:01,920
Speaker 1: Derby during this time. Roller Derby of course would have

956
00:54:01,920 --> 00:54:05,840
Speaker 1: to be its own episode. But this kind of apparently

957
00:54:05,920 --> 00:54:08,279
Speaker 1: kicked off as sort of a dance, a thon on

958
00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:12,799
Speaker 1: skates that had no real competitive contact sport aspects to it.

959
00:54:13,600 --> 00:54:15,839
Speaker 1: But the roots of roller Derby are there.

960
00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:18,640
Speaker 3: How do we get from that to roller ball?

961
00:54:20,440 --> 00:54:22,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's there's probably a whole lot you

962
00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:25,880
Speaker 1: could you could dissect culturally about the different boom periods

963
00:54:25,920 --> 00:54:29,440
Speaker 1: of skating, because yeah, even just very roughly looking at

964
00:54:29,440 --> 00:54:31,680
Speaker 1: what we've looked at here, and we're looking at the

965
00:54:31,760 --> 00:54:36,160
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century, we're looking at the nineteen thirties. We

966
00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:38,920
Speaker 1: can easily look at skating in the fifties and then

967
00:54:38,960 --> 00:54:42,360
Speaker 1: again in the seventies, to some degree in the nineties,

968
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:45,360
Speaker 1: and then once again, you know, really booming more recently

969
00:54:45,440 --> 00:54:46,240
Speaker 1: during the pandemic.

970
00:54:47,560 --> 00:54:49,879
Speaker 3: Well, it hasn't made its way back into my life yet,

971
00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:53,360
Speaker 3: but I say bully to it. Let the rinking live on.

972
00:54:53,960 --> 00:54:57,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess one of the key things is to

973
00:54:57,239 --> 00:54:58,680
Speaker 1: be a rinker, you have to go to a rink,

974
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:01,440
Speaker 1: and a lot of skaters don't go to a skating rink,

975
00:55:01,520 --> 00:55:04,080
Speaker 1: or don't exclusively go to a skating rink, so they

976
00:55:04,120 --> 00:55:05,799
Speaker 1: couldn't really own that terminology.

977
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:09,040
Speaker 3: I guess they call that D ranking D ranking, D

978
00:55:09,200 --> 00:55:12,040
Speaker 3: rank your mind, so you can go outside the rank.

979
00:55:12,120 --> 00:55:14,520
Speaker 1: We don't need any division in the roller skating community.

980
00:55:14,719 --> 00:55:17,440
Speaker 1: We don't need like rinkers versus wilders or something. I

981
00:55:17,440 --> 00:55:21,239
Speaker 1: don't know what the terminology would be, because ultimately, I

982
00:55:21,280 --> 00:55:23,440
Speaker 1: think the message that we that I've gotten from all

983
00:55:23,480 --> 00:55:25,960
Speaker 1: this is that the roller skating is and should be

984
00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:30,160
Speaker 1: liberating here here, as long as you can retard your

985
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:34,160
Speaker 1: velocity and not crash through a mirror at a fancy ball.

986
00:55:36,040 --> 00:55:38,040
Speaker 3: I mean, if anything, the Merlin story has got to

987
00:55:38,080 --> 00:55:41,359
Speaker 3: be a warning against distracted driving of all sorts. We're

988
00:55:41,360 --> 00:55:44,240
Speaker 3: trying to play the violin wild skating not a good idea,

989
00:55:44,320 --> 00:55:47,399
Speaker 3: regardless of the skate design having brakes or not. I mean,

990
00:55:47,840 --> 00:55:48,960
Speaker 3: that's just not a good idea.

991
00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:53,000
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, like the proper environment for testing out your prototype.

992
00:55:53,520 --> 00:55:57,520
Speaker 1: Is it a maskedball or is it maybe like a

993
00:55:57,560 --> 00:56:00,640
Speaker 1: padded warehouse somewhere? Be the latter.

994
00:56:01,000 --> 00:56:04,680
Speaker 3: Sorry, in my mind that the masquerade that he's skating

995
00:56:04,719 --> 00:56:09,680
Speaker 3: through now is eyes wide shut. I'm sure it wasn't

996
00:56:09,719 --> 00:56:11,480
Speaker 3: like that. I'm sure it was one of the regular.

997
00:56:12,040 --> 00:56:15,840
Speaker 1: That's one of the regular All right, we're gonna go

998
00:56:15,880 --> 00:56:18,000
Speaker 1: and close out this episode here, but again, we'd love

999
00:56:18,040 --> 00:56:19,719
Speaker 1: to hear from all the skaters out there if you

1000
00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:22,800
Speaker 1: have some added inside to throw in here. Just a

1001
00:56:22,840 --> 00:56:24,840
Speaker 1: reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a

1002
00:56:24,920 --> 00:56:27,520
Speaker 1: science and culture podcast, with core episodes and Tuesdays and Thursdays,

1003
00:56:27,560 --> 00:56:29,839
Speaker 1: short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set

1004
00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:32,319
Speaker 1: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird

1005
00:56:32,320 --> 00:56:33,640
Speaker 1: film on Weird House Cinema.

1006
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:37,400
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1007
00:56:37,680 --> 00:56:39,200
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1008
00:56:39,200 --> 00:56:41,680
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1009
00:56:41,680 --> 00:56:43,719
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1010
00:56:43,840 --> 00:56:46,480
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow

1011
00:56:46,560 --> 00:56:54,760
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1012
00:56:56,040 --> 00:56:58,960
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1013
00:56:59,040 --> 00:57:01,799
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, that's the iHeartRadio app,

1014
00:57:02,000 --> 00:57:17,440
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