16th June 1884: America’s first roller coaster, the Switchback Railway, opened at Coney Island скачать в хорошем качестве

16th June 1884: America’s first roller coaster, the Switchback Railway, opened at Coney Island

Although the world’s oldest roller coasters can be traced back to the ‘Russian Mountain’ sledding slopes of the 18th century, the idea spread to France where tracks for wheeled vehicles began to be developed over the course of the next hundred years. In the United States, the Mauch Chunk gravity railroad that had been built to haul coal offered thrill seekers their first experience of riding down a track at high speeds when the owners began to take paying passengers. Inspired by the Mauch Chunk railway and the subsequent ‘inclined plane railway’ designs of Richard Knudsen, Ohio-born inventor LaMarcus Adna Thompson began to design what would become America’s first purpose-built roller coaster in the early 1880s. Constructed at New York City’s Coney Island in 1884, the Switchback Railway was 600 feet long and cost $1,600 to build. Consisting of two undulating wooden tracks that ran parallel to each other, passengers on the Switchback Railway had to climb a tower after riding down and then wait while the bench-like car was pushed to top and switched to the other track for the return journey. Having opened on 16 June 1884, passengers paid 5 cents a ride and achieved speeds of up to 6 miles per hour. Despite this seemingly unimpressive performance, the Switchback Railway reportedly paid for itself in just three weeks. This success led to Thompson constructing similar rides that went on to feature painted scenery, dark tunnels, and moving cables to haul the cars up the inclines. In 1895 he established the L. A. Thompson Scenic Railway Company and over the next few decades roller coasters began to spread across the country.