preview

Behind The Ride David Mumpower Summary

Decent Essays

Reading Responses: Behind the ride This extract from David Mumpower’s book ‘Behind the ride’ discusses the origins and story behind the invention of roller coasters. The first chapter discusses the various claims on conception from across the world, focusing on the three nations who all believe to have a claim on the creation of the roller coaster. The chapter starts off in 17th century Russia where an idea was formed inspired by mountaineering thrill seekers. Naturally, the cold snowy conditions helped to create the most basic starting point for the rollercoaster as they compacted snow and ice to manufacture taller and longer manmade compacted hills of ice that helped to create more velocity for the sled rider. Also beginning to add in twists …show more content…

The author references Russia’s Catherine the Great, who is said to have played a large part in the commission of these new rides, with a fondness for mountain sledding. However, the French lay a claim for the part they played in the formation of the roller coaster. Around 1817 the French were working on two of their own rides ‘Les Montagnes Russes a Belleville’ and ‘The Promenades Aeriennes’. Much like the Russians used tracks to control the carts, the French had the idea to tether the cart to the track; this allowed them to explore tracks that would create more velocity as the cart would not be able to fly off the track. The wheels of the cart were slotted into grooves in the track, helping the cart to stay under control whilst following the path. This addition of wheels to the cart has been debated as the Russian’s were said to have put them on first but not on to anything that resembles that of the roller coaster. The passage continues to the explore the USA’s and their ‘father of the roller coaster’. LaMarcus Adna Thompson, a successful American businessman, on his travels discovered an ancestor of the modern coaster, the ‘Mauch Chunk switchback …show more content…

When Thompson stumbled across the switchback railway, this gave him an idea to bring this thrill-seeking ride back to the city, he just needed to make his own mountain. Thompson came up with a design and patented it, in fact he created around 30 patents. Bringing his manmade mountain to Coney Island. In 1884 his ride the ‘Gravity pleasure switchback railway’ became a resounding hit, bringing in lots of money to the park and making it the most popular amusement park ride at the time. From this point on, the battle to create the best, biggest, and most thrill-seeking roller coaster continued, with Disney joining in to create their first coaster, the ‘Matterhorn Bobsleighs’. They experimented and improved upon the original coasters, wanting to create the realistic bobsleigh feeling. To do this Disney needed to create more twists and turns, which created a new challenge of how they could do this. To create the flow of the bobsleigh they needed to use a new material that was more malleable and with that came the introduction of steel coasters. In conclusion, this article presents many contributory factors that led to the creation of the modern coasters as we know

Get Access