The Rolling Ball Web
An Online Compendium of
Rolling Ball Sculptures, Clocks, Etc.
By David M. MacMillan et. al.
"Model roller coasters" differ from ball runs only insofar as a cart or car, rather than a ball, is used. In this category would fall any number of tracked car toys.
This category also includes "centrifugal railways" used in the 19th century to demonstrate centrifugal force. These were just tracks with a loop in them, demonstrating that the car could be kept on the track even when upside-down in the loop. Turner illustrates such a model railway in an engraving taken from Griffin (130).
The study of centrifugal mechanisms goes back at least to Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695). Morton and Wess illustrate portions of a "whirling table" apparatus for illustrating centrifugal effects, and attribute the origins of this type of apparatus to 's Gravesande (1720). Yet Morton and Wess do not indicate that any "centrifugal railway" devices where present in the King George III collection. It is likely, therefore, that this is an 19th century invention.
There was a proposal for a perpetual-motion rolling cone railway in The Mechanic's Magazine in 1829. It is discussed in the section on purported perpetual motion machines.
Full sized roller coasters are of course related to rolling ball apparatus. This topic is popular enough that it is well-covered elsewhere, though. One site that I've found is:
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1.2, 1998/06/18.
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