Who Invented Roller Coasters?
The issue is still disputed because the historians don’t agree on where the roller coaster was built. Some say it was Russia while other historians emphasize that it was France. In both cases, the roller coasters were built by a team of engineers so no single person can claim to be the inventor of roller coasters.
A Wildly held belief is that the Russians built the world’s first roller coaster near St. Petersburg. It was named Belleville Mountain and it was completed in 1817. It was the first roller coaster in the modern sense of the word because it used mechanisms to lock the cars to the track. There are other historians too who claim “Promenades Aeriennes” (The Aerial Walk) in France to be the first roller coaster in the world argue that it too used the locking mechanism and it had had the first loop track.
The roller coasters began getting popular by the end of the 19th century and the trend still shows no signs of declining. Almost every major amusement park in the world has got a roller coaster. The fastest roller coaster can cross speeds of 200 km/h and more amazing is the fact that roller coasters don’t use any motor! They are pulled by the gravitational forces and their inertia makes them run. The future will witness faster roller coasters which may not even have wheels—roller coasters working on the principle of magnetic levitation!
Category: Inventions