Faster, higher, stronger, more scary … Each year, 2 billion thrill seekers are jostling in amusement parks and fairgrounds to do … shake up by these monumental rides including Russians and Americans compete for paternity.
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If the roller coaster is so popular, it is undoubtedly because human beings love to play to be afraid. There are currently some 13,700 scattered circuits worldwide. This documentary, rich in testimonies of engineers, neuroscientists, circuits designers and thrill seekers, traces the long history of this particular entertainment.
Each year, amusement parks and fairgrounds see two billion individuals are ready to wait for hours to get away in the air on increasingly sophisticated installations. Extreme centrifugal force, accelerations, loopings, spirals, impressive turns … The risk of accident, if it remains rare, does not prevent the quest for emotions, the pleasure of being afraid. The chemical reactions of the brain in the face of a controlled danger have been studied, underlines the scientist Meryl Malezieux, of the Max-Planck Institute, in Munich, where she decrypts the brain mechanisms which make “vibrate with fear and pleasure”.
“American mountains”
Originally, the inhabitants of Saint Petersburg, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, spray water of wooden structures, which, under the effect of frost, become steep ice; In Pennsylvania (United States), minors invent a similar attraction by transporting coal in wagons that descend the mountain. In the Tsarist Empire, the first roller coasters will be called “American mountains” … In 1897 will be built, in Coney Island (New York), rudimentary facilities in the first amusement park in the world.
Since then, it’s an endless race, on both sides of the Atlantic. According to the documentary, the first looping dates from 1846. In 1989, the Parc Asterix offered a circuit of seven loopings, and, in 2013, an English Russian mountain aligns fourteen! In 2005, an attraction of New Jersey opens the highest circuit (128 meters) and fastest (200 km/h) in the world in 2005. Record broke in 2010 in Abou Dhabi with 133 meters high and peaks at 240 km/h!
Werner Stengel, German engineer of genius, is at the origin of modern circuits thanks in particular to his complex mathematical calculations which made it possible to challenge the laws of physics. He is also the inventor of the first modern looping, inaugurated in California in 1975.
As for Daniel Schoppen, another high -level engineer, his profession is to design increasingly spectacular roller coaster. Like the one called “Taiga”, installed in Finland, in Parc Linnanmäki, and designed “as a musical composition, with its fast and slow passages. And this bump that we crossed upside down”. An attraction up to the most demanding expectations, judging by the particularly strong emotions felt by Anita and Bruno, a couple who devotes their weekends and holidays to test the roller coasters around the world: they are Nearly 2,500!