An Industrial History of The Skateboard, Starting From The Very Beginning
Late Neolithic era: invention of the wheel.
1800 BCE: Oldest known production of steel in Turkey.
1600 BCE: (Shang Dynasty) Chinese artisans cast metal objects with clay molds.
615BCE: Babylonian king Nabopolassar lays down the first asphalt road in the historical record.
80AD: the Romans invent concrete and use it to build a series of structures that still stand today, notably the Pantheon and the Coliseum.
476AD: the Roman empire falls. The recipe for Roman concrete is lost to the ages.
1498: Leonardo Da Vinci describes an early ball bearing in his design for a helicopter. (More discussion of bearing history can be found here.)
1540: Italian metallurgist Vannoccio Biringuccio describes sand casting metal objects in his metalworking manual De la pirotechnia.
1735: Eccentric Belgian clockmaker and inventor John Joseph Merlin rides into a London party on his new wheeled shoes, which resembled inline skates. Unable to stop, he crashes into a mirror.
1794: British inventor Philip Vaughan is awarded the first patent on the modern ball bearing design, which features balls that run in a groove around an axle assembly.
1797: British naval engineer Samuel Bentham is awarded a patent for a veneer-cutting machine after inventing plywood.
Early 1800s: Standardization of screw threads begins in earnest.
1819: John Loudon Macadam publishes “Remarks (or Observations) on the Present System of Roadmaking,” which describes a method for the construction of durable compacted gravel roads.
1824: Joseph Aspdin receives a patent for Portland Cement, an early modern concrete.
1855: The introduction of Henry Bessemer’s Bessemer Process makes the mass production of steel possible.
1856: Henri-Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville opens the first industrial facility for the production of aluminum.
1860s: Immanuel Nobel, discovers the superior strength of laminated plywood and invents the rotary lathe, a tool for cutting continuous veneers off a single log. (His son Alfred Nobel would later invent dynamite and establish the Nobel Prize.)
1869: Parisian bicycle mechanic Jules Suriray patents the use of ball bearings in bicycles. British cyclist James Moore would later ride a bearing-equipped bicycle built by Suriray to victory in the world’s first road bicycle race.
1870: Belgian immigrant Edward de Smedt invents asphalt pavement at Columbia university.
1883: Bicycle and sewing machine manufacturer Friedrich Fisher invents the ball grinding machine, allowing for the manufacture of large volumes of hardened steel balls that are perfectly round and uniformly sized. This leads to the creation of the ball bearing industry.
1884: After pioneering the use of rebar in concrete, Ernest Ransome completes the first iron-reinforced concrete building, the Arctic Oil Company warehouse in San Francisco.
1891: The first concrete street is laid down in Bellefontaine, Ohio.
1901: English surveyor Edgar Hooley invents “tar-macadam,” a road surface made from gravel suspended in tar that is spread on the road and rolled flat. We know this today as tarmac.
1907: Shotcrete is invented.
1908: James Leonard Plimpton patents the modern roller skate, with four wheels mounted on two lean-to-steer trucks.
1931: German furniture manufacturer Gebrüder Thonet releases the S43 cantilevered chair, featuring a three dimensional molded plywood seat and backrest.
1931: Elastic insert lock nuts are invented.
1937: Otto Bayer discovers basic polyurethane chemistry.
1938: DuPont chemical receives a patent for Nylon, the first commercially available thermoplastic, later used in nylon-insert lock nuts.
1943: Charles Eames designs a molded plywood leg splint for injured soldiers.
1949: Vulcanized rolling polyurethane rubber is invented.
1973: Improved thermoplastic polyurethane roller skate wheels are popularized.