This site began with a compilation of roller coaster patents, which was soon expanded to include other amusement rides. The patent section also contains my interpretation of the very early history of the roller coaster in the United States and an examination of several patents containing improvements in the track structure and wheel arrangement of wooden coasters. The non-patent half of the site explores a number of unrelated topics, including the first generation of wild mouse rides popular in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as non-coaster rides from the same period. In general, these pages contain information about roller coasters and other rides which I have not seen elsewhere online.
I have attempted to include every U.S. patent related to roller coasters. The main table contains more than 470 patents for roller coasters and their appliances, as well as some rides which are not strictly roller coasters, but which appear to be relevant to the development of roller coasters. A number of variant forms of ride that never succeeded are included in the table. However, I have removed many other variant rides to one of the other tables. Rides removed include most powered rides, alpine slides and related rides, many helical gravity rides, and rides in which the vehicle imparts oscillating, rotating, or cycloidal motion to the passengers. The official patent classifications do not distinguish gravity from powered rides, and it was not always possible from a cursory examination to decide whether a ride was powered or not, so it is possible that some patents are placed incorrectly or inconsistently in my tables.
Numerous additional ride patents are placed in tables on several additional pages. I have ignored those that consist of bicycle tracks, playground-size or rider-propelled rides (except a few typically located in amusement parks), and miniature models or toys. Even with these omissions, the site has grown to more than 2600 patents. My knowledge of most of these rides is limited, and I have not identified many of these patents by their standard or trade names. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Access on the USPTO site to patents older than 1976 is strictly by patent number, date of issue, and classification. There is no online index by title or author. US Patents from 1920 to the present can be searched via the European Patent Office site. Some patents are present but lack the associated bibliographic information, and can be found in this resource only by patent number. As of 2007, patent text can be searched via Google Patents. This facility is extremely useful, even though the conversion of images to searchable text is quite error-prone. I have thoroughly searched patent class 104/53 and its subclasses, which generally cover amusement railways, very broadly defined. However, this misses many specialized appliances applied to roller coasters, including rolling stock classified under heading 105. My initial searches found only about half of John Miller's roller coaster patents. L. A. Thompson's obituary in the New York Times claims nearly thirty patents from 1884-1888, but I have only found 23 for the entire period until his death in 1919. (I suspect that the larger number includes non-U.S. patents in the total, even though most of these are essentially duplicates of the U.S. patents.)
There are a number of examples of technology for which I have not found patents, such as rail-bending machinery and the track systems used for older Wild Mouse rides, Schwarzkopf Wildcats, and Pinfari Zyklons. Patents whose utility is not restricted to rides are likely to have eluded my search. Some advances may have been patented only in other countries or not at all. Joseph McKee of Palisades Park, for example, has been credited with making improvements in roller coaster technology which he never sought to patent.
I have listed patents with their date of issue. Filing dates, which are a more reliable guide to the date of invention, can be found by examining the published patents.
Simpler links return the Google Patent pages for each patent (if available). With the addition of links to full-patent pdfs, this source is now the easiest way to view or download patent images. These links generally do not work if a patent number search in Google fails.
Released 1-Mar-2001 with table of roller patents, list of patent firsts, and essay on early history
25-Apr-2001
completion of additional pages including most ride patents through 2000
2-May-2001
added a few more design patents; added a couple of non-patent roller coaster pages
15-May-2001
added a page devoted to the old Wild Mouse rides in North America
13-August-2001
added page for Klaus Roto-, Strato-, and Satellite Jets; added kiddie coaster page
17-September-2001
added roller coaster topology page
27-Nov-2001
added page for rides of c1960
6-Dec-2001
added wooden track page
3-Jan-2002
updated patents and applications to end of 2001
29-May-2002
completed substantial revision of wild mouse page; added long-overdue acknowledgments page
19-July-2002
added brief page with recent non-U.S. roller coaster patents
23-Feb-2004
minor updates to non-patent pages; improvements to histories of Scramblers, Skywheels, Paratroopers, Wild Mouse rides, and Roto-Jets
2-March-2004
addition of about 90 previously overlooked patents; addition of about 50 patents for previously excluded park-scale passenger-propelled rides
3-March-2004
added patent number locator page
14-April-2004
added Terraserver park locator page
20-June-2006
fixed patent urls so they would work properly with recently changed USPTO site
3-Jan-2007
added mention of Google Patents
18-Jan-2007
added about 50 additional previously missed patents; removed a dozen inadvertent duplicates
29-Jan-2007
added page with newspaper accounts of early roller coasters
6-Feb-2007
added another 50 previously missed patents
18-Feb-2007
minor html format changes to most pages; improved within-page navigation
9-April-2007
added page with the Rocky Mountain News editorial campaign against Denver's 1885 roller coaster
31-May-2007
added links to Google Patents to the main patent tables
23-July-2007
added scaled plans of wild mouse rides to wild mouse page
9-Nov-2007
added page with early accounts of the invention of the roller coaster
13-March-2008
added pages with accounts of early European gravity rides and early centrifugal railways
1-May-2008
altered interface to Google