Carousel

Early carousels

In 17th-century Europe, equestrian royal tournaments known as "carrousels" (French for little battle) began to be held. The most famous carrousel of this kind was held by Louis XIV in June 1662, in the courtyard of the Tuileries Palace, to celebrate the birth of his son and heir apparent. The site of the event, next to the Louvre, is still known as the "Place du Carrousel." One of the skill tests performed during these events was ring jousting, a practice originally developed by 10th-century Arabian and Moorish horsemen in which rings suspended from posts or trees would be speared by a lance, sometimes at full gallop. The noblemen participating in these tournaments often overworked their horses while practicing, so an early device was developed in the late 17th century to allow participants to practice ring jousting without the need for riding horses. It consisted of wooden horses suspended from a wheel mounted on a central pole, which was spun by a work horse walking around the contraption's perimeter.

Among the attractions of the [Wilhelmsbad] entertainment venue during my boyhood years was, above all, the carousel. What a delight to be driven around in a tight circle on life-size wooden horses, or in graceful open carriages, drawn by wooden white and black horses. The knight's games were fun to watch. With childlike seriousness, indeed with an almost solemn air, people played ring jousting and dart throwing, slashed Turks' heads as they drove or rode past, and hurled balls into a Moor's wide-open mouth.

,  Karl Cäsar von Leonhard, recalling late-18th century childhood memories in what is now Germany, 1854

Devices like these became popular among commoners by the early 18th century, and carousels (as they came to be known) were being built and operated at various fairs and gatherings in Central Europe. Animal figures and mechanisms would be crafted during the winter months and the family and workers who made them would go touring in wagon trains, operating their carousels at various venues. These early carousels had no platforms; the animals would hang from chains and fly out from the centrifugal force of the spinning mechanism. They were often powered by animals walking in a circle or people pulling a rope or cranking.

The usage of carousels eventually spread to other parts of the world. Primitive carousels in North America were present since at least the late 18th century; in 1784, the New York City Common Council passed a law forbidding their use due to being unsafe.

19th century

By the mid-19th century, the platform carousel was developed; rideable animal figures and chariots were fixed to a circular floor that would rotate around a central pole. These carousels were called "dobbies" and were operated manually by the operator or by ponies. Carousels in the United Kingdom, where they are also known as "gallopers," usually turn clockwise; while those in North America and mainland Europe typically turn counterclockwise.

United Kingdom

By 1803, John Joseph Merlin had a carousel in his Mechanical Museum in London, where gentry and nobility liked to gather on winter evenings. The horses "floated free over a pole." It was connected to a "big musical instrument that played a fully orchestrated concerto" and from the first note, the carousel would start turning while each horse would make a galloping movement with a visitor riding on its back. Merlin did not patent his inventions and engineers were allowed to come to create their own models of his creations. By the mid-19th century, the carousel became a popular fixture at English fairs. The first steam-powered mechanical roundabout, invented by Thomas Bradshaw, appeared at the Pot Market fair in Bolton in about 1861. It was described by a Halifax Courier journalist as "a roundabout of huge proportions, driven by a steam engine which whirled around with such impetuosity, that the wonder is the daring riders are not shot off like cannonball, and driven half into the middle of next month."

Soon afterwards, English engineer Frederick Savage began to branch out of agricultural machinery production into the construction of fairground machines, swiftly becoming the chief innovator in the field. Savage's fairground machinery was exported all over the world. By 1870, he was manufacturing amusement rides similar to carousels with velocipedes (an early type of bicycle), and he soon began experimenting with other possibilities, including a roundabout with boats that would pitch and roll on cranks with a circular motion, a ride he called 'Sea-on-Land'. In 1880, Savage applied a similar innovation to the more traditional mount of the carousel horse; he installed gears and offset cranks on the platform carousels, thus giving the animals their well-known up-and-down motion as they traveled around the central pole, the galloping horse. The platform served as a position guide for the bottom of the pole and as a place for people to walk or other stationary animals or chariots to be placed. He called this ride the 'Platform Gallopers'. He also developed the 'platform-slide' which allowed the mounts to swing out concentrically as the carousel built up speed. Fairground organs (band organs) were often present (if not built-in) when these machines operated. Eventually, electric motors and lights were installed, giving the carousel its classic look. These mechanical innovations came at a crucial time when increased prosperity meant that more people had time for leisure and had spare money to spend on entertainment. It was in this historical context that the modern fairground ride was born, with Savage supplying this new market demand. In his 1902 Catalogue for Roundabouts, he claimed to have "... patented and placed upon the market all the principal novelties that have delighted the many thousands of pleasure seekers at home and abroad."

United States

The first known individual carousel with surviving historical records in the US was opened in the 1840s by Franz Wiesenoffer in Hessville, Ohio. On July 25, 1871, William Schneider of Davenport, Iowa, was issued the first American patent for a carousel. To commemorate this milestone, July 25 was declared National Merry-Go-Round Day (a.k.a: National Carousel Day) in 2014 by the National Carousel Association (NCA), an organization focused on preserving historic carousels primarily in the United States and Canada.

The American carousel industry was developed by European immigrants, notably Danish immigrant Charles I. D. Looff, German immigrant Gustav Dentzel, and Scottish immigrant Allan Herschell. During the late 19th century, several carousel construction centers formed in the United States, each with their own style:

• Coney Island style, characterized by elaborate and sometimes faux-jeweled saddles, as well as mirrors to catch and reflect lights. This style was pioneered by Looff in Brooklyn, New York City.
• Philadelphia style, known for more realistically painted saddles, this style was pioneered by Dentzel and the Philadelphia Toboggan Company.
• Country Fair style, often with no saddles at all, this style was pioneered by Allan Herschell and Edward Spillman of North Tonawanda, New York (near Buffalo), and Charles W. Parker of Kansas.

20th century

During the Great Depression, the production of wooden carousel figures was phased out and were replaced by more durable, mass-produced aluminum castings. These were in turn discontinued in favor of cheaper and lighter fiberglass castings later in the 20th century.

Thousands of hand-painted, wood-carved carousels (possibly as many as 10,000) were built during their golden age from the 1870s to the early 1930s; less than 200 complete units exist today. Mechanical band organs that provided music, and brass ring dispensers that encouraged riders to sit on the outermost (often stationary) row, were common features for carousels during their golden age, but are now very rare. Carousels are manufactured and operated throughout the world today and are often used as symbols for all amusement rides, and the amusement industry as a whole, exemplified by the carousel horse logo used by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) until 2018. Several notable extant carousels are recipients of the NCA's Historic Carousel Award.

Notable extant carousels built before 1870

Notable extant carousels built 1870-1939

Notable extant carousels built 1940-present

• The protagonist in the 1945 Broadway musical Carousel is a carousel barker.
• In the climactic scene of Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 film Strangers on a Train, the protagonist and antagonist struggle on a carousel.
• In the 1963 film Charade, there is a scene near its ending in which a carousel appears in the background with the main theme's music.
• In the 1964 Mary Poppins, Mary, Bert, and the two Banks children ride a carousel, whose carousel horses float off the platform and lead the riding characters to a fox hunt and horse race that Mary wins.
• The children's television program The Magic Roundabout, which aired from 1965 to 1977, uses a carousel as its central motif.
• The 1973 film The Sting features a large indoor carousel adjacent a brothel; the brothel's madam allows the prostitutes to ride it on slow nights.
• The House on the Rock carousel near Spring Green, Wisconsin, a rotating, display-only art piece built in 1981, has 269 carousel figures and is billed as the largest indoor carousel in the world.
• David Carradine's 1983 film Americana revolves around a Vietnam War veteran's obsession with the restoration of an abandoned carousel.
• In the 1983 film Something Wicked This Way Comes, a carousel makes its riders younger by one year each time it completes a backwards revolution.
• The children's television program Playdays had a carousel maintained by Mr. Jolly named Rosie, who was the focus of episodes broadcast from 1992 to 1997.
• In the 2011 Australian children's picture book The Carousel by Ursula Dubosarsky, after a carousel ride, a child has a semi-mystical vision of the carousel horses breaking free from the wheel and galloping across the world.
• In 2014, American singer-songwriter Melanie Martinez released the song "Carousel," using the word carousel as a metaphor for love that goes in circles endlessly.
• One of the most popular scenes from the HBO series Euphoria features one of the main characters, Cassie Howard, experiencing an orgasm on a carousel in a carnival
• The three installments of the book series Kingdom Keepers: The Return by Ridley Pearson, published between 2015 and 2017, feature the carousel from Disneyland used as a time machine to arrive at the opening of Disneyland.
• The second song on Travis Scott's 2018 album Astroworld is named "Carousel."