Die Marken auf dem Eise sind das unauslöschliche Sündenregister, welches die Schlittschuhseele des Eisläufers, sein Schwerpunkt, auf dem Gewissen hat.
Author: Bev
The cost of skating (in 1899)
In 1899, Frederick George Aflalo compiled a book called The Cost of Sport. It's an attempt to quantify how much you should expect to pay to participate in various sports. There's a short section on skating by Theodore Andrea Cook.
An experiment no student ever did
I used to teach at Shimer College, and one of the courses I taught frequently was Natural Sciences 3: The Nature of Light. As part of the final exam, I asked the students to select one of the Queries from Isaac Newton's Opticks and design an experiment to answer it. Extra credit was available for actually doing the experiment.
Henry Eugene Vandervell
Henry Eugene Vandervell (1824-1908) is well-known in skating circles as the "father of English style skating." He's remembered for inventing the counter, writing (with T. Maxwell Witham) A System of Figure Skating, and chairing the Ice Figure Committee of the National Skating Association (Hines, 233). But the skating books say little about his personal life.… Continue reading Henry Eugene Vandervell
Loop skates
Back when all competitive skaters did both figures and freestyle, everyone who had reached a certain level had two pairs of skates, "patch skates" for figures and freestyle skates. Dick Button had a third pair just for loops.
Reconstructing the Amsterdam skate, part 3
The skates work!
Reconstructing the Amsterdam skate, part 2
This is a follow-up to my post on the Amsterdam skate, a skate dating to c. 1225 that was found in Amsterdam. In that post, I wrote about making the metal part. The skate also has a wood part, which this post is about.
White boots
It's often said that Sonja Henie was the first to wear white boots for figure skating. She may have been responsible for setting the trend because of her popularity, but she wasn't the first to do it.
Buddy Snow Skates
Last month, I found a very interesting old ice skate at an antique shop. The label is partly worn off, but was sufficient for me to identify it as a Buddy Snow Skate from Falcon, NY.
Gösta Berg
Gösta Berg (1903--1993) was a Swedish ethnologist who worked on skating, skiing, and other winter activities. His writings include three papers on bone skates, written in three different languages over a period of nearly thirty years.