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
John Joseph Merlin The couple eventually had two children, a daughter Ann Johanna, baptized November 19, 1786, and married in 1820, and a son Joseph, baptized May 18, 1790. The parish register for St. Andrew Holborn gives their address as Shoe Lane, not at the museum in Princes Street. The marriage seems to have been kept separate from Merlin's public life; advertisements for an apartment in Princes Street in 1786 refer to Merlin as a "single man". Ann Goulding predeceased Merlin, and was buried at Christ Church, Southwark on 22 November 1793, just ten years after their marriage. Their daughter Ann Merlin apparently