Its obvious that skating was a neccesity in the beginning of mans occupation in the northern parts of europe when man was forced to find some means of travel over ice and snow. “Skrid Finnai” or “Sliding Finns” was a common name for the most ancient inhabitants of Finland and Sweden and used in the Norsk Saga.Skating has long been a means of travel in countries with long, cold winters, such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Holland. It has been conjectured that the skate in its most primitive form was most probably made of wood and was used on both snow and ice but there is also evidence skates were made from the leg bones of large animals.In the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge and in the British Museum,there are the bones of deer which have been ground down to be used as sledge runners and for the purpose of binding on to the feet.Leather straps were slipped through holes that had been bored at each end of the bone.The word "skate" in Dutch is "schenkel" which means "leg bone" In April, 1869, during excavations at London Wall some of these were found with two Roman sandal shoes and are now exhibited at Guildhall London.The oldest pair of skates known date back to 3000 B.C.and found in Switzerland.
DEVELOPMENTS
The origin of skates in anything like their present form cannot
be placed further back than the so-called Iron Age or approximately A.D. 200,
that is to say, when iron first came into general use in the Northern countries.When
the various uses of iron became known, runners of this metal were fixed on to
wood and in this way the present form of skate began to be developed, and with
this development came a certain proficiency in their use, a proficiency special
to the Northern peoples, accounted a great accomplishment and one sung with
pride in the afore-mentioned Norsk Saga. As, amongst these Northern tribes,
there were those who subdued Southern England in A.D. 450 this would seem to
be the approximate time of the introduction of skating into Britain
By the thirteen hundreds the Dutch were using wooden platform skates with flat
iron bottoms or runners. The platform skates were attached to the shoe using
leather straps. The skater used a spiked pole for moving.By the 15th century
a narrow metal double edged blade was added to the wooden platform skates .
This allowed them to abandon the pole and push off with one foot and glide on
the other foot. This form of skating which we still use today is called the
Dutch Roll.
Steel skates, with straps and clamps to fasten them to the shoes,
were sold in the 1850s, and later came the skate permanently attached to the
shoe.
E. V. Bushnell of Philadelphia, PA invented the first all steel clamp on skate
in 1848. Jackson Haines developed the two plate all metal blade around 1864
which was attached directly to his boots.This made it possible to dance, jump
and spin.The toe pick or rake was added to the front of the Haines skate in
the 1870's. This improvement made toe pick jumps possible. The skating world
then had to wait over 40 years for another major improvement to be made to skates.
In 1914 John E. Strauss, a custom blade maker from St. Paul, MN, invented the first closed toe blade made from one piece of steel. This final major improvement to skates lightened and strengthened the skates, thereby making today's triple and quadruple jumps possible.
Ice skating, which is performed on both recreational and professional levels,
is a sport in which participants wearing steel-bladed skates slide around on
an indoor or outdoor ice rink. The sport of ice skating using wood and bones
for blades originated in Scotland and the Netherlands and was brought to North
America by Scottish immigrants in the1700s. The invention of the steel-bladed
skate to replace those made of iron gave way to international competitions.
SPORT
Skating, besides being an important form of winter recreation and the essential
skill in the game of ice hockey (see hockey, ice ) has developed into three
different sports—speed skating, figure skating, and ice dancing . All three
are now features of the Winter Olympic games.