From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The track of a typical roller coaster. This track scheme is loosely based on the Crystal Beach Cyclone.

The roller coaster (the term jet coaster is sometimes used for roller coasters in Japan) is a popular amusement ride developed for amusement parks and modern theme parks. LaMarcus Adna Thompson patented the first roller coaster on January 20, 1885. In essence a specialized railroad system, a roller coaster consists of a track that rises in designed patterns, sometimes with one or more inversions (such as loops) that turn the rider briefly upside down. The track does not necessarily have to be a complete circuit, as shuttle roller coasters exhibit. Most roller coasters have multiple cars in which passengers sit and are restrained into. An entire set of cars hooked together is called a train. Some roller coasters, notably Wild Mouse roller coasters, run with single cars.

In what may be the first practical application of the roller coaster, NASA has announced that it will build one to help astronauts escape the Ares I launch pad in an emergency. ^[1]

The oldest roller coasters descended from Russian Ice Slides held on specially constructed hills of ice^[2], located especially around St Petersburg. Built in the 17th century, the slides were built to a height of between 70 and 80 feet (24 m), consisted of a 50 degree drop, and were reinforced by wooden supports. These slides became popular with the Russian upper class. Catherine the Great was such a fan of these attractions that she had a few of these slides built on her own property.

There is some dispute as to who was the first to put this operation on wheels. Some historians say that the first roller coaster was built under the orders of Catherine the Great. This roller coaster was built by the Russians in the Gardens of Oreinbaum in St. Petersburg in the year 1784. Many other historians believe that the first roller coaster was built by the French. In France, the Les Montagnes Russes à Belleville constructed in Paris in 1812 and the Promenades Aeriennes both featured wheeled cars securely locked to the track, guide rails to keep them on course and higher speeds.^[3] The first loop track was probably also built in Paris from an English design in 1846, with a single-person wheeled sled tracks were complete circuits, running through a 13-foot (4 m) diameter loop.

There are several explanations of the name roller coaster. It is said to have originated from an early French design where slides or ramps were fitted with rollers over which a sled would coast.^[3] This design was abandoned in favor of fitting the wheels to the sled or other vehicles, but the name endured.

Another explanation is that it originated from a ride located in a roller skating rink in Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1887. A toboggan-like sled was raised to the top of a track which consisted of hundred of rollers. This Roller Toboggan then took off down gently rolling hills to the floor. The inventors of this ride, Stephen E. Jackman and Byron B. Floyd, claim that they were the first to use the term "roller coaster."^[4]

In 1827, a mining company in Summit Hill, Pennsylvania constructed the Mauch Chunk gravity railroad, a 14-kilometre downhill track used to deliver coal (and a miner to operate the mine train's brake) to Mauch Chunk, PA (town now known as Jim Thorpe, PA).^[5] By the 1850s, the "Gravity Road" (as it became known) was providing rides to thrill-seekers for 50 cents a ride. Railway companies used similar tracks to provide amusement on days when ridership was low.

Thompson's Switchback Railway, 1884.

Using this idea as a basis, LaMarcus Adna Thompson began work on a gravity switchback railway that opened at Coney Island in 1884. ^[6]. Passengers had to climb to the top of a platform and rode a bench-like car down the 600 ft track up to the top of another tower where the vehicle was switched to a return track and the passengers took the return trip.^[4] This track design was soon replaced with an oval closed-circuit.^[3] In 1885, Phillip Hinkle introduced the first full-circuit coaster with a lift hill, the Gravity Pleasure Road, which was soon the most popular attraction at Coney Island.^[3] Not to be outdone, in 1886 LaMarcus Adna Thompson patented his design of roller coaster that included dark tunnels with painted scenery. "Scenic Railways" were to be found in amusement parks across the county.^[3]

As roller coasters grew in popularity, experimentation in coaster dynamics took off. As early as the 1880s, the concept of a vertical loop was explored, and in 1895 the concept came into fruition with The Flip Flap, located at Sea Lion Park in Brooklyn, and shortly afterward with Loop-the-Loop at Olentangy Park near Columbus, Ohio. The rides were incredibly dangerous, and many passengers suffered whiplash. Both were soon dismantled, and looping coasters had to wait for over a half century before making a reappearance.

The Scenic Railway at Luna Park (Melbourne, Australia), the world's oldest continually-operating rollercoaster, built in 1912.

By 1912, the first underfriction roller coaster was developed by John Miller. Soon, roller coasters spread to amusement parks all around the world. Perhaps the best known historical roller coaster, The Cyclone, was opened at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. Like The Cyclone, all early roller coasters were made of wood. Many old wooden roller coasters are still operational, at parks such as Kennywood near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Blackpool Pleasure Beach, England. The oldest operating roller coaster is Leap the Dips at Lakemont Park in Pennsylvania, a side friction roller coaster built in 1902.The oldest wooden Roller Coaster in the UK is the Scenic Railway at Dreamland Amusement park in Margate,Kent and features a system where the Brakeman rides the car with wheels.

The Great Depression marked the end of the first Golden Age of roller coasters. Theme parks in general went into a decline that lasted until 1972, when The Racer was built at Kings Island in Mason, Ohio (near Cincinnati). Designed by John Allen, the instant success of the Racer began a second golden age, which has continued to this day.

In 1959, the Disneyland theme park introduced a new design breakthrough in roller coasters with the Matterhorn Bobsleds. This was the first roller coaster to use a tubular steel track. Unlike conventional wooden rails, tubular steel can be bent in any direction, which allows designers to incorporate loops, corkscrews, and many other maneuvers into their designs. Most modern roller coasters are made of steel but wooden roller coasters are still being built.

The first modern-day roller coaster to perform a 360-degree inverting element was the Corkscrew located at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, which opened in 1975 and was designed by Arrow Dynamics of Utah.

New roller coaster designs and state of the art technology push the physical limits on what type of experiences can be had on the newest coasters. For example, coasters like the Incredible Hulk Coaster feature launched lift hills to create a unique experience.

The cars on a typical roller coaster are not self-powered. Instead, a standard full circuit roller coaster is pulled up with a chain or cable along the lift hill to the first peak of the coaster track. The potential energy accumulated by the rise in height is transferred to kinetic energy as the cars race down the first downward slope. Kinetic energy is then converted back into potential energy as the train moves up again to the second peak. This hill is necessarily lower, as some mechanical energy is lost to friction.

Not all roller coasters feature a lift hill, however. The train may be set into motion by a launch mechanism such as a flywheel launch, linear induction motors, linear synchronous motors, hydraulic launch, compressed air launch or drive tire. Such launched roller coasters are capable of reaching higher speeds in a shorter length of track than those featuring a conventional lift hill. Some roller coasters move back and forth along the same section of track; these are known as shuttles and usually run the circuit once with riders moving forwards and then backwards through the same course.

A properly designed roller coaster under good conditions will have enough kinetic, or moving, energy to complete the entire course, at the end of which brakes bring the train to a complete stop and it is pushed into the station. A brake run at the end of the circuit is the most common method of bringing the roller coaster ride to a stop. One notable exception is a powered roller coaster. These rides, instead of being powered by gravity, use one or more motors in the cars to propel the trains along the course.

If a continuous-circuit roller coaster does not have enough kinetic energy to completely travel the course after descending from its highest point (as can happen with high winds or increased friction), the train can valley: that is, roll backwards and forwards along the track, until all kinetic energy has been released. The train will then come to a complete stop in the middle of the track. This, however, works somewhat differently on a launched roller coaster. When a train launcher does not have enough potential energy to launch the train to the top of an incline, the train is said to "roll back." On some modern roller coasters, such as Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, this is an occurrence highly sought after by many coaster enthusiasts.

Most large roller coasters have the ability to run two or more trains at once. These rides use a block system, which prevents the trains from colliding. In a block system, the track is divided into several sections, or blocks. Only one train at a time is permitted in each block. At the end of each block, there is a section of track where a train can be stopped if necessary (either by preventing dispatch from the station, closing brakes, or stopping a lift). Sensors at the end of each block detect when a train passes so that the computer running the ride is aware of which blocks are occupied. When the computer detects a train about to travel into an already occupied block, it uses whatever method is available to keep it from entering. The trains are fully automated. The above can cause a cascade effect when multiple trains become stopped at the end of each block. In order to prevent this problem, ride operators follow set procedures regarding when to release a newly-loaded train from the station. One common pattern, used on rides with two trains, is to do the following: hold train #1 (which has just finished the ride) right outside the station, release train #2 (which has loaded while #1 was running), and then allow #1 into the station to unload safely.

Because roller coasters are intended to feel risky, accidents such as the September 5, 2003 fatality at the Disneyland Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, attract public attention.

Statistically, roller coasters are very safe. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that 134 park guests required hospitalization in 2001 and that fatalities related to amusement rides average two per year. According to a study commissioned by Six Flags, 319 million people visited parks in 2001. The study concluded that a visitor has a one in one-and-a-half billion chance of being fatally injured, and that the injury rates for children's wagons, golf, and folding lawn chairs are higher than for amusement rides.^[7] In fact, driving to the amusement park has a higher risk of injury than riding the rides at the amusement park. It is not unusual for park management to pay higher insurance premiums for carousels than they do for roller coasters.

Many safety systems are implemented within roller coaster systems. The key to the mechanical fail safes is the control of the roller coaster's operating computers: programmable logic controllers (often called PLCs). Most roller coasters run with three separate PLCs; however, only one PLC is required to detect a fault for the ride's fail-safes to be activated. This is often the reason that the ride trains may stop on the lift or the brake runs, yet after a short time the ride starts again without any obvious maintenance by staff. It is likely in such a case that one of the PLCs detected a fault by mistake, and the ride operator only needed to restart the ride.

Nevertheless, accidents do occur.^[8] Regulations vary from one authority to another. Thus in the USA, California requires amusement parks to report any ride-related accident that requires an emergency room visit, while Florida exempts parks whose parent companies employ more than 1000 people from having to report any accidents at all. Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts has introduced legislation that would give oversight of rides to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

Ride accidents can be caused by riders or ride operators not following safety directions properly, but in extremely rare cases riders can be injured by mechanical failures. One such example was the 2006 de-railing of one car on the Wild Thing roller coaster at Valleyfair!.

In recent years, controversy has arisen about the safety of the increasingly extreme rides. There have been suggestions that these may be subjecting passengers to translational and rotational accelerations that may be capable of causing brain injuries. In 2003 the Brain Injury Association of America concluded in a report that "There is evidence that roller coaster rides pose a health risk to some people some of the time. Equally evident is that the overwhelming majority of riders will suffer no ill effects." ^[9]

A similar report in 2005 linked roller coasters and other thrill rides with potentially triggering abnormal heart conditions that could lead to death.^[10] Autopsies have shown that recent deaths at various Disney parks, Anheuser-Busch parks, and Six Flags parks were due to previously undetected heart ailments.

Roller coaster design is a science, as well as an art: the designer must use knowledge of kinematics to avoid overstressing the human body and building an uncomfortable or dangerous ride. The acceleration is a significant design parameter, as is the rate of change of acceleration, jerk. Jerk is often used in engineering as some precision or fragile objects—such as passengers need time to sense stress changes and adjust their muscle tension to avoid injuries such as whiplash.

Today, there are two main types of roller coaster:

• Steel roller coasters
• Wooden roller coasters (also known amongst enthusiasts as 'Woodies')^[11]

Steel coasters are known for their smooth ride and often convoluted shapes that frequently turn riders upside-down via inversions. Wooden coasters are typically renowned by enthusiasts for their rougher ride and "air time" produced by negative G-forces when the train reaches the top of hills along the ride.

Modern roller coasters take on many different forms. Some designs take their cue from how the rider is positioned to experience the ride. Traditionally, riders sit facing forward in the coaster car, while newer coaster designs have ignored this tradition in the quest for building more exciting, unique ride experiences. Variations such as the stand-up roller coaster and the flying roller coaster position the rider in different ways to provide different experiences. Stand-up coasters involve cars that have the riders in a standing position (though still heavily strapped in). Flying coasters have the riders hanging below the track face-down with their chests and feet strapped in. Vekoma "Flying Dutchman" coasters have the riders starting out sitting above the track, then they fully recline so that the riders are looking at the sky. Eventually, they twist into the "flying" position. B&M flying coasters have the riders hanging below the track like in an inverted (hanging) coaster. To go into the flight position, the section of the car where the riders' feet are is raised to the track. That way, they start in the flight position. In addition to changing rider viewpoint, some roller coaster designs also focus on track styles to make the ride fresh and different from other coasters.

See Roller coaster elements for the various parts of a roller coaster and the types of thrill elements that go into making each roller coaster unique.

Some names have been used by parks for marketing their roller coasters. While often used among coaster fans they are not necessarily industry accepted terms.

• Stratacoaster - When Cedar Point announced Top Thrill Dragster in 2003 the park used the term Stratacoaster in their press materials to describe a roller coaster that was 400 feet (120 m) tall.
• Gigacoaster - Used by Cedar Point and manufacturer Intamin AG to market and describe the Millennium Force roller coaster. Cedar Point claimed the term referred to a roller coaster that broke the 300-foot (90 m) mark. The term is actually used as a production designation on the Intamin AG website.
• Hypercoaster is a term coined by amusement industry writer Allen Ambrosini. One definition of a hypercoaster is a coaster that is built for speed and airtime, while a second definition is of a coaster with an initial drop of between 200 and 299 feet (91 m) tall. Some manufacturers, such as Bollinger & Mabillard and Chance Morgan use this term for production models both over and under 200 feet tall.
• Junior roller coaster. A roller coaster specifically designed for families and children not able to ride the larger rides.

Roller Coasters

Kingda Ka, the world's tallest and fastest roller coaster, located at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey. (see Notable Roller Coasters)	Riding Expedition GeForce.	This all-wooden roller coaster, built in 1951, dominates the Linnanmäki amusement park in Helsinki, Finland.	The Road Runner roller coaster at Movie World, Australia.	"Montu", a popular inverted roller coaster at Busch Gardens Africa
A classic wooden roller coaster at Great America.	"Lethal Weapon - The Ride" at Warner Bros. Movie World is among the first steel inverted roller coasters in Australia

• Arrow Dynamics (now S&S-Arrow since S&S Power bought Arrow Dynamics)
• Bolliger & Mabillard
• Bradley and Kaye
• Chance Morgan
• Fabbri Group
• Gerstlauer
• Giovanola
• Great Coasters International
• Intamin AG
• MACK Rides
• Maurer Söhne
• Pinfari (defunct)
• Premier Rides
• S&S Power
• Schwarzkopf (defunct)
• TOGO (defunct)
• The Gravity Group
• Vekoma
• Zamperla
• Zierer

Look up roller coaster in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Roller coaster

• List of notable roller coasters
• List of amusement parks

• Roller Coaster Database - Information, statistics and photos for over 1900 roller coasters throughout the world
• Roller Coaster History - History of the roller coaster
• Roller Coaster Patents - With links to the U.S. Patent office
• Roller Coaster Physics - Classic physics explained in terms of roller coasters
• How Roller Coasters Work
• CoasterGuide - Information on many roller coasters and amusement parks throughout the country.