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 as a mechanician with British jeweller and goldsmith James Cox. As Cox's chief mechanician, Merlin worked with him to create pieces such as Cox's barometric clock (before 1768) and the Silver Swan (1773). In addition Merlin acted as a manager and curator of Coxs Jewelry Museum in Spring Gardens, which became a favored gathering-place of fashionable London between 1772 and 1775. Horace Walpole referred to the sort of creations displayed by Cox and Merlin as "scientific toys". Fanny Burneys characters visit Cox's museum and debate the significance of such creations in her novel "Evelina". Samuel Johnson asserts the underlying importance