4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2024
⏱️ 21 minutes
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0:00.0 | Welcome aboard Pink Monorail. I'm your pilot, Michelle Viadolid, and next to me is my co-pilot |
0:10.5 | Noah Viadolid. Hey, everybody. In our series, Manufacturing the Magic, we're taking a slight detour |
0:16.7 | into the mechanics of magic, looking at how some of the things work |
0:21.5 | and the history of some of the rides and attractions that you see at theme parks. |
0:26.3 | Last time we talked about the Ferris wheel and carousels, |
0:29.7 | and this time we're talking about what my dad calls rolycoasters, the roller coaster. |
0:39.6 | PBS.org has a nice article called A Century of Screams that takes a brief look at the history |
0:46.7 | of the roller coaster. In Russia, in the 1700s, mountain workers would slide down frozen rivers |
0:53.0 | to get back down. It was fast and fun, |
0:55.8 | and I'm sure also happened elsewhere. But savvy Russians liked the sensation, so built massive |
1:01.5 | ice hills to first slide down in blankets and then, including Catherine the Great, make |
1:06.7 | carts with wheels to run up and down the hills. In the 19th century, cars ran on railroad tracks |
1:12.6 | to keep from falling off midway. Speaking of midway, there was a Russian hills attraction on the |
1:17.8 | Midway Plaisons at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, not too far from the Ferris wheel. |
1:24.3 | We do keep going back to the White City, don't we? |
1:26.4 | Mm-hmm. It was a nexus of sorts. |
1:28.2 | The term Russian mountains was used throughout Europe, but in Russia they were called |
1:32.9 | Americensky Gorki or American Mountains. The Russian mountains were built to about 70 to 80 feet |
1:39.7 | tall, with a 50-degree drop, and were supported by wooden supports covered with ice. Catherine the Great |
1:46.2 | was said to have been the first person to have a summer version with wooden carts instead of sled |
1:51.5 | in 1784. After the defeat of Napoleon, not Napoleon III who held those crazy expositions |
1:57.9 | but the original Napoleon at Waterloo, occupying Russia of |
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