It is 18th-century St. Petersburg, and the talk of the town is this new attraction: a 180-meter ice ramp with colored lanterns that you would go down in a sled. Little did they know that these "ice slides" would mark the beginning of a worldwide sensation—what we call today roller coasters, or "Russian mountains" as it is called in many languages.
The first leap was made by Empress Catherine the Great, who enjoyed the ride so much that she decided to put rollers on her imperial sled, adding wheels and grooved tracks to create a summer version at her palace in 1784. Inspired by this, the French brought the idea to Paris, and in 1817, the first actual roller coaster was opened. It was a simple gravity-powered wooden ride that gave people the thrill of descending a slope.
While the French kept improving their roller coasters, it was in America that they would be taken to another level. It started unexpectedly, with the first rail-powered roller coaster being created on the Mauch Chunk railway in eastern Pennsylvania in 1870, where an old mine rail track was converted into a tourist ride with a huge descent called the Scenic Railway.
From there, roller coasters, initially made of wood, began spreading to county fairs across the USA. Then, in 1959, Walt Disney built the first steel roller coaster at Disneyland, called the Matterhorn Bobsled, making it much safer and more enjoyable and leading to an explosion in popularity. But it all is traced back to some creative folks who started playing with gravity in St. Petersburg before it spread, evolved, and became iconic.
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