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 one from 1780 is in Munich's Deutsches Museum. Merlin also experimented with violins and violas. Merlin moved in increasingly illustrious circles, socializing with Londoners from the gentry and nobility. Friend and musicologist Charles Burney commissioned his instruments, and even played one of them in a courtroom to defend Merlin's patent. Johann Christian Bach performed publicly on Merlin's instruments, and around 1774 Johann Christian Fischer was painted by Gainsborough standing next to one of Merlin's pianos. Thomas Gainsborough painted Merlin himself in 1781, holding a pocket beam balance which he had invented. Even though she regarded him as a foreigner, novelist