A British man named John Joseph Merlin created a turning point when he invented the roller skates. He also broke the gender barrier allowing women to also participate in rollerskating (Bellis). This seemed to greatly impact the people to roller skate on a regular basis. As roller skating began to be popular it started to become a regular activity people could see happening across the streets (Bellis). John Merlin could also be known as someone that lived in the Gilded Age, which lasted from 1877 - 1900 (“The Gilded Age”). The Gilded Age Greatly influenced the creation of roller skates. This was because when the government became corrupt, roller skates fixed many problems of boredom (“The Gilded Age”) due to this roller skates became a great importance to stores to sell.
When choosing a topic for history day. The first thing I thought of was to choose something that was interesting and unique. So I decided to go with the mongolian empire. It was a very unique topic but it was very difficult to find primary and secondary sources. Then my teacher saw me struggling so she gave me the idea of going with something I enjoyed doing. That's how i came up with roller skating.
When going with the topic of roller skating I didn't expect to find many primary sources. But to my surprise there were many newspaper articles to use information from. When starting this topic I went through a total of 4 steps. The first step was going onto google’s search bar and typing the library of congress. Then at the website I went to the category settings and clicked newspapers since it was an easy primary source. Also the newspapers were great sources since they were in great detail of the timeline because they were living in that timeline. So it was easy to say information because it was happening in their life.
When creating this website I searched for images and brainstormed on how to include previous information. When trying to include information it was hard due to the fact that in other documents I focused on john merlin and roller skates not the gilded age. But then there were more problems as pictures so i went on a previous website and searched for that information a picture. So i took as much as i could from the websites including information and pictures. Then for the color i went with a plain brown due to the fact that the pictures were taken in black and white.