This site began in 2001 with a compilation of roller coaster patents and an essay on the early history of roller coasters as deduced from those patents. Pages with patents for other rides were added later that year. Also added in 2001 were pages covering early wild mouse coasters and several other rides, with information largely derived from issues of Billboad published between 1948 and 1960.
Subsequent changes were largely revisions, updates, and minor improvements. Beginning in 2007, several pages with information from digitized newspapers were added. These were subsequently expanded as more material became available.
Few updates have been made since mid-2015. The site has been offline since my retirement in 2023, and was rehosted in 2024 using GitHub Pages. Few changes to content have been made, but broken links have been fixed or removed, and the site has been modernized to html5.
Important update: Since direct links to US patent pdfs are no longer working (2025), all USPTO patent links have been replaced by links to the patents in Google Patents (see more details below).
My general approach has been to attempt to provide information not otherwise available online. In the years since this content was first uploaded, the proliferation of online sources has led to an abundance of information that, in some cases, has superceded my pages. In a few cases I have corrected errors, or removed pages as no longer relevant, but I have more often left the content unchanged.
I attempted to include every U.S. patent related to roller coasters, until updates ceased in 2015. The main table on the roller coaster patent page contains more than 470 patents for roller coasters and their appliances, as well as some patents for rides (and other things) that are not strictly roller coasters, but appear to be relevant to their development. Zip lines and backyard coasters are located in separate tables.
Numerous additional ride patents are placed in tables distributed across several additional pages. I have ignored those that consist of bicycle tracks, playground-size or rider-propelled rides (except a few typically located in amusement parks), and miniature models or toys. Even with these omissions, the site has grown to more than 2600 patents. My knowledge of many of these rides is limited, and in many cases, patents have not been identified with their standard or trade names. Since it was not always possible from a cursory examination to detrmine whether a ride was powered or not, it is possible that some patents are placed incorrectly or inconsistently in these tables.
Access on the USPTO site to patents older than 1976 is easiest by patent number, date of issue, and classification. There is at this time (2025) no completely reliable online index by title or inventor for older patents, although OCR versions of patent text have been generated from the page images. It is also possible to search using Google Patents, with the usual caveats about reliability of the text conversions. Many US patents can also be searched via the European Patent Office search site. Some patents are present but lack the associated bibliographic information, and can be found in this resource only by patent number.
In addition to issued patents, I have included published patent applications in the tables. Since the end of 2000, most US patent appliations are published 18 months after their priority dates. The patent application table include only applications for which patents had not yet been issued at the time of compilation.
For US patents and patent applications, searches by patent number can be conducted using the USPTO basic search or the USPTO advanced search page. To access the USPTO versions (pdfs or full-text versions) it is currently necessary to enter the patent number (left padded with 0s if shorter than 7 digits) into one of these patent search pages.
There are a number of examples of technology for which I have not found patents, such as rail-bending machinery and the track systems used for older Wild Mouse rides, Schwarzkopf Wildcats, and Pinfari Zyklons. Patents whose utility is not restricted to rides are likely to have eluded my search. Some advances may have been patented only in other countries or not at all. Joseph McKee of Palisades Park, for example, has been credited with making improvements in roller coaster technology which he never sought to patent.
I have listed patents with their date of issue. Filing dates, which are a more reliable guide to the date of invention, can be found by examining the published patents.