Roller skates Roller skates Roller skates are shoes, or bindings that fit onto shoes, that are worn to enable the wearer to roll along on wheels. The first roller skate was effectively an ice skate with wheels replacing the blade. Later the "quad" style of roller skate became more popular consisting of four wheels arranged in the same configuration as a typical car. While the first reported use of roller skates was on a London stage in 1743, the first patented roller skate was introduced in 1760 by Belgian inventor John Joseph Merlin. His roller skate wasn't much more than an ice
Émile Merlin lecturer on astronomy and geodesy at the University of Ghent and in 1919 he became a full professor and director of the geographical station of the University of Ghent. He was an alpinist and died in a mountain accident in the French Alps in Le Bourg d'Oisans. Merlin was one of the editors for the French edition of Klein's encyclopedia. For his work on celestial mechanics he was awarded the A. de Potter Prize of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences. He was president of the Belgian Mathematical Society, honorary member of the Astronomical Society of Mexico and member of