Name John Merlin | Role Inventor | |
 | ||
Died May 4, 1803, London, United Kingdom | ||
John Joseph Merlin
John Joseph Merlin was an inventor (born Jean-Joseph Merlin, Huy, Belgium, 1735). He is noted for the invention of inline skates in 1760, and, with London jeweller and entrepreneur James Cox, for the manufacture of ingenious automata such as the Silver Swan, and mechanical clocks, particularly Cox's timepiece, which was powered by changes in atmospheric pressure.
Contents
Other inventions of Merlin's include: a self-propelled wheelchair, a communication system for summoning servants, and a prosthetic device for "persons born with stumps only", whist cards for the blind, a pump for expelling "foul air", a pedal-operated revolving tea table, and a mechanical chariot with an early form of odometer.
Merlin also developed musical instruments. A pianoforte with a six-octave span he made in 1775 preceded by fifteen years Broadwood's five-and-a-half octave grand piano. He made improvements to the harpsichord, and created a barrel-organ/harpsichord which played nineteen tunes.
He created Merlin's Mechanical Museum to display his machines.
He died in Paddington, London in 1803.
Skates
Thomas Busby's Concert Room and Orchestra Anecdotes (1805) mentions an accident Merlin had while demonstrating his "skaites":
"One of his ingenious novelties was a pair of skaites contrived to run on wheels. Supplied with these and a violin, he mixed in the motley group of one of Mrs Cowleys' masquerades at Carlisle House; when not having provided the means of retarding his velocity, or commanding its direction, he impelled himself against a mirror of more than five hundred pounds value, dashed it to atoms, broke his instrument to pieces and wounded himself most severely."