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 He was referred to by contemporaries as "The Ingenious Mechanic". Jean-Joseph Merlin was born on September 6, 1735, in Huy, in the Walloon Region of the Province of Liège in what is now Belgium. His parents were blacksmith Maximilien Joseph Merlin and his wife Marie-Anne Levasseur. He was baptised the same day as he was born, at the parish church of Saint-Pierre-Outre-Meuse in Huy. A broadsheet obituary and later sources give his birthdate incorrectly as September 17, 1735. Merlin's parents had married in 1732. Merlin was the third of six children; his mother died when he was eight. Merlin's father