Roller skates the benefits they list include: 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
John Joseph Merlin with London jeweller and entrepreneur James Cox. Merlin also created a wide variety of mechanical clocks. One of the most notable was Cox's timepiece, which was powered by changes in atmospheric pressure. Another of Merlin's timepieces is the Merlin Band Clock. Merlin also developed musical instruments. A pianoforte with a six-octave span he made in 1775 preceded by fifteen years Broadwood's five-and-a-half octave grand piano. He made improvements to the harpsichord, and created a barrel-organ/harpsichord which played nineteen tunes. Merlin invented inline skates with two wheels in the 1760s. Thomas Busby's "Concert Room and Orchestra Anecdotes" (1805) mentions an accident