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
Robert Davis (inventor) Robert Davis (inventor) Sir Robert Henry Davis (1870 – 1965) was an English inventor and director of the Siebe Gorman company. His main invention was the Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus, an oxygen rebreather that Davis patented for the first time in 1910, inspired by the rebreathers that Henry Fleuss patented as of 1876. Davis breathing set was destined to allow British submarine crews to escape when their ship started to sink. While still directing Siebe Gorman Davis was the first British to buy a licence from the Cousteau-Gagnan Aqua-Lung (from the French company La Spirotechnique), starting commercialization of scuba sets