Where did roller coasters originate?

Roller coasters have had a long history of thrill-giving. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the first known roller coasters were built in St. Petersburg, Russia, and were called "Russian Mountains." A wheeled roller coaster, called the "Switchback," was constructed as early as 1784 in Russia. By 1817, the first roller coaster with cars locked to the tracks had gone into operation in France. The first U.S. roller coaster patent was granted to J. G. Taylor in 1872. (A patent is a government document that gives an inventor the sole right to manufacture his or her invention for a certain period of time.) LaMarcus Thompson built the first known roller coaster in the United States at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, in 1884. The longest roller coaster in the world today is the "Ultimate" at Light-water Valley in Ripon, Great Britain, with a run of 1.42...  more