From Bones to Zamboni: A Fun History of Ice Skating

References to ice skating date as far back as 2,000 years, when skates were used as a means of transportation to navigate northern Europe’s frozen waterways to hunt during the winter months.

The earliest known skates were made from animal bones and leather straps

Primitive Ice Skates

The very first ice skates are believed to be made from the leg bones of large animals such as deer, elk and sheep. Hunters would make a hole through each end of the bone and use leather straps to attach the bone to their shoes or boots. The bottom of the bone was carved smooth and

lubricated with lard so the runner could quickly pass over the ice using walking sticks to propel themselves across the frozen waterways. Skate blades would eventually evolve to be made from wood, then iron, and finally, to the steel blades used today.

From Survival to Sport

For hundreds of years, ice skating could only be enjoyed when the temperature was cold enough for large bodies of water to thoroughly freeze. But in 1842, a scientist named Henry Kirk built a “miniature lake” by mixing crystallized alum, salts and melted Sulphur. While the surface didn’t hold up well to skate blades, Kirk’s process attracted the attention of other scientists.

Using brine and carbonic acid, scientist W.A. Parker produced the first man-made ice surface thick enough to stand up to a skate blade. Parker’s 1865 development was followed by Matthew Julius Bujac’s system of refrigeration, which included buried metal tubes below the water’s surface. Shortly thereafter, John Gamgee installed the first 24x16-foot ice rink in Chelsea, England.

The system was perfected in the 1890s and ice rinks began to open all over Europe. By the early 20th century, ice skating rinks were built in warm weather climates worldwide, making recreational skating available to everyone for the first time, day or night, warm or cold.

Frank A. Zamboni’s Model A (1949)

Smoothing Things Over

In the early days of recreational skating, it took a team of five people approximately 90 minutes to manually resurface the ice that skate blades had chipped, scraped and cut. But in 1948, after several failed experiments, a man named Frank J. Zamboni (1901–1988) rolled out his Model A machine, which allowed one man to resurface the ice in just 10 minutes. Since then, the company has created more than 10,000 machines that have been used around the world. In fact, 20 Zamboni machines were on hand to resurface the ice during the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, and 15 machines were used at the 2006 Games in Torino, Italy.

Did You Know?

The snow gathered by a Zamboni could make approximately 3,661 snow cones, per resurface!