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 went to live with an aunt, Elizabeth Hazell, and is identified in Merlin's 1803 will as his "niece". Merlin seems to have withdrawn from public life for a time after his wife's death in 1793. He advertised no new inventions until April 1795. From then on, public appearances and inventions are mixed intermittently with reports of his ill health. Merlin's last public appearance may have been in January 1803, when he appeared in Hyde-park in a carriage without horses, powered by a windlass. Merlin is noted for the manufacture of ingenious automata, in particular the Silver Swan that he developed