Who Invented Roller Skating?
Roller skating began around the middle of the 18th century, when an unknown man in The Netherlands made a pair of skates with wooden wheels. Most likely, the inventor fashioned the skates so that he could practice ice-skating techniques during the warm months. The first pair of roller skates offered for sale appeared in Belgium
Sports historians have traced roller skating to the early 1800s when an unknown Dutchman sought to find a warm-weather equivalent to ice skating. He decided to attach wooden disks to shoes; after a short period of refinement, roller skating became a popular pastime in Holland. The sport attained even greater popularity among the North American public with the introduction of the steel wheel with ball bearings.
