Rollerblade inline skates

Rollerblade inline skates were the first modern inline skates, developed and popularized by Scott B. Olson in Minneapolis in the 1980s and sold under the trademark Rollerblade, launching a new recreational sport. Olson began in 1979 as an ice hockey player and licensed distributor of the Super Sport Skate, and with his brother Brennan he removed its wheel frames and fitted them to customers' old hockey boots before arriving at a design with a stable, expandable frame, polyurethane wheels and double ball bearings that rolled faster and remained more reliable on road surfaces. In 1981 he persuaded the Chicago Roller Skate Company to give him the patent for the Chicago Roller-Blade, which had claimed many of his design features, and he founded Ole's Innovative Sports to make his Ultimate Street Skates with a toe brake. In 1983 he marketed a new generation with heel brakes under the Rollerblade trademark.