Ice-skating has come to Ireland in a big way over recent months. But how many of the thousands of novice skaters whizzing or slithering around artificial rinks know that their latest craze owes quite a lot to an obscure but innovative American called Frank Zamboni, asks Steve Coronella
Growing up in Boston in the early 1970s, as I did, it was impossible to overlook Zamboni's most famous invention. The Boston Bruins were the town's championship team back then, and the club's success ignited a widespread interest in ice hockey at schoolboy level that continues today. Consequently, every boy over the age of eight was able to identify the motorised re-surfacing machine - known simply as a Zamboni - that moved up and down the ice in rinks of every shape and size throughout New England.
Born to Italian immigrant parents in 1901 - appropriately enough in Eureka, Utah - Frank Zamboni moved with his family at the age of two to a farm in Idaho. Over the next two decades country life roused an innate cleverness and optimism in the young inventor. But unlikely as it seems, he developed his refrigeration skills in the dry and dusty surroundings of southern California. Like many others before and after him, Zamboni felt that California was the place to be, and he moved there in 1920 to join his two brothers in a car repair business.
A few years later, the brothers branched out into the refrigeration business, building and installing the large chiller units used by local dairies to keep milk cool. Diversifying once again, they then built a plant to supply the block ice that California's fruit and vegetable dealers needed to transport their produce by rail across the US.
But more sophisticated refrigeration techniques in businesses and homes made block ice an anachronism and the Zambonis' business reached a crisis. Their lucky break came with the improbable arrival of ice-skating in southern California. The pastime was becoming increasingly popular, but there were too few rinks to meet the demand.
Filling a gap in the market, Frank Zamboni, together with his brother and cousin, built a rink that still operates today. At its opening in 1940, Iceland - in Paramount, California - boasted a floor area of 20,000 square feet, enough to accommodate 800 skaters at one time.
Incredibly, the rink was at first an open-air attraction. As you might imagine, keeping the ice in fit shape for skating was a tricky job under the southern California sun. A roof was soon installed, which helped preserve the ice sheet for longer, and Zamboni then confronted his next design test: devising a technique to resurface the ice quickly and efficiently.
The old method of scooping up the shavings manually, spraying water over the ice, then smoothing it clean and waiting for the water to freeze took more than an hour and was very labour-intensive in a rink as big as the Zambonis'.
(At a recent skating session in Dublin, I got some idea of the extent of the challenges that must have faced Zamboni as he attempted to keep an ice-skating business up and running almost on the edge of a desert. The surface I was skating on in temperate Ireland featured large patches of unfrozen water, which was duly mopped up by the cotton leggings and hoodies of the less experienced skaters among us.)
In 1950, nearly a decade after Zamboni saw the need to improve ice-resurfacing, Frank J Zamboni & Co was established across the street from the Iceland rink, and the first Zamboni machines began appearing. The story goes that Olympic figure-skating champion Sonja Henie spotted a machine and ordered one. Frank Zamboni then obliged his most illustrious customer by driving it to Chicago himself.
The Zamboni machines, which resemble small trucks, shave the ice with a large blade and gather the shavings, as well as washing the surface and spreading clean water to renew the rink. At the last count, nearly 9,000 Zambonis are being used worldwide.
Frank Zamboni's later inventions included machines for removing excess water - or paint stripes - from artificial grass surfaces such as Astroturf. But his last creation, in 1983, was for ice-rinks: a machine for removing built-up ice from the edges. After his death in 1988 Zamboni was inducted posthumously into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame in the US.
So, skaters, spare a thought for him. Without a Zamboni machine (or a derivative) to refresh the ice in rinks around Ireland this winter, you might all be slogging around ankle-deep in ice shavings, cursing the fact that no one had yet discovered a way to put down a fresh sheet of ice without having to shut the rink for half the day.