Peter Mundy records the first description of a merry-go-round - May 17th, 1620

On this day in 1620, English traveler Peter Mundy wrote the earliest known description of a carousel ride. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that takes a spin through history every day of
the week. I'm Gay, Blue Sier, and today we're looking

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at a major turning point in carousel history, the day
when Europeans discovered the simple pleasure of going in circles.
The day was May seventeenth, sixteen twenty. English traveler Peter

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Mundy wrote the earliest known description of a carousel ride.
He spotted the curious contraption while passing through modern day Bulgaria,
which was part of the Ottoman Empire at the time.
Monday had happened upon a village fair where he witnessed
a new kind of mechanical amusement. In his journal, he
described the ride as a large wagon wheel lying on

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its side, with eight small seats fastened along the wheel's circumference.
A column at the center of the wheel was turned
by a person walking in a circle, which created enough
centrifugal force to send the wheel and the children on
board it on a merry go round. These days, carousels
or merry go rounds are among the tamest rides you'll

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find at a carnival or amusement park, and that's a
bit ironic considering the ride actually got its start as
part of medieval combat training. By the twelfth century, Turkish
and Arabian horsemen had begun using a carousel like device
to help improve their aim while in motion. The device,
which had actually existed in some form since the sixth century,

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consisted of a rotating center column with long poles reaching
outward from along its top. Suspended from those poles were
large hanging baskets or in some cases, wooden planks, like
you'd find on an old swing. When the center post
was turned, either by a person, a horse, or a mule,
the seats would begin to spin in a circle. Today

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we would call this set up a flying swing carousel.
Turkish warriors made use of the device in a few
different ways. One exercise was similar to jousting, except with swords,
and involved men on horseback riding in a circle around
the device while trying to knock off the helmets of
the people seated on it. Another common exercise was to

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throw breakable clay balls filled with perfume back and forth
between the riders. The goal for those on horseback and
for those on the carousel was to catch any ball
thrown their way, and the penalty for missing a catch
was to reek of perfume until the game was over.
It was kind of like an early form of paintball

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or dodgeball, except the ball in this case was a smelly,
makeshift water balloon. This type of military exercise was unique
to Southwest Asia until it caught the eye of European
soldiers during the Crusades. The onlookers started calling the spectacle
the little War or the little Battle, and when the
Crusaders returned to Europe they took the tradition of horse

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mounted exercises with them. The nickname Little War was translated
as carouselo in Italian and later as carousel in French.
Most of the Little Wars in Europe didn't involve a
spinning machine, but in the sixteen hundreds the French finally
corrected that oversight. One of the main feats performed in

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a French carousel tournament was an event called the ring tilt.
French horsemen would hang a small metal ring from a
tree and then take turns trying to spear the ring
with a lance while galloping toward it at full speed. Eventually,
a practice device was built to help participants train for
these popular competitions. The device took its cue from the

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Turkish original, consisting of wooden beams suspended from arms branching
out from a central pole. The pole would then be
rotated by a human or an animal, and the riders
would try to snag the stationary rings with their lances
as they went around and round. It was pretty close
to the fairground ride we know today, with some models

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even using legless wooden horses instead of just beams. That said,
the French device was still a training tool used to
develop a military skill. It wasn't an amusement ride, and
it wasn't for children. However, that wasn't the case over
in the Ottoman Empire. The Turks who had settled there
were still building their trademark spinning machines, but they weren't

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just for combat training anymore. The first European known to
encounter this more festive take on the device was a
Cornish man named Peter Mundy. He was a lifelong traveler
and had set out from Constantinople in May of sixteen
twenty on a four month overland journey back to England
along the way. He kept track of his adventures in

(05:05):
a journal, which he later published as a book called
The Travels of Peter Munday in Europe and Asia. On
May seventeenth, Monday arrived at the city of philip Apolis,
the site of modern day Plavdy in Bulgaria. His timing
couldn't have been better, as there happened to be a
citywide festival going on that day in honor of a

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Turkish holiday. Strangely, Monday's journal entry for the seventeenth begins
with a lengthy description of some truly heinous execution methods
that he had witnessed in Constantinople. Eventually, though, the author
moves on to lighter fare, including descriptions of three fantastic
machines that have since become staples of modern carnivals and fairs.

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The first device he saw was a kind of super
tall swing which only adults were allowed to ride. The second,
was essentially an early version of a ferris wheel, was
a carousel which had been purpose built not for military
training but for the enjoyment of little children. Munday delightedly
described the contraptions for his Western readers, referring to the

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carousel as a great cartwheel, on whose circumference is fastened
little seats whereon the children being set the wheel is
put about, they all going around horizontal wise. Munday also
included a sketch of the man powered married around and
the other whimsical devices he saw that day. The wheel's

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design was eventually replicated by European craftsmen, with the simple
wooden seats gradually being replaced by carved wooden horses, a
nod to the ride's roots as a training device for horsemen.
By the eighteen fifties, the early flying swing carousels had
given way to platform mounted devices, though they were still
operated manually, either by a fair ground employee or by

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a pony. That finally changed in eighteen six sixty one,
when an Englishman named Thomas Bradshaw created the first steam
powered carousel, which he set up at Aylsham Fair in Norfolk.
One observer marveled at the ride's newfound speed, calling it
quote a roundabout of huge proportions driven by a steam engine,

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which whirled around with such impetuosity that it's a wonder
the daring riders are not shot off like cannonball and
driven half into the middle of next month. Bradshaw's ultra
fast carousel was patented in eighteen sixty three, and soon
after versions of it began popping up at steam fares
and other gatherings throughout England and Central Europe. Around the

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same time, many European immigrants brought their love of carousels
to the United States, where the ride received some serious upgrades.
For one thing, American carousels were much bigger than their
European counterparts, and the woodwork of their horses tended to
be more elaborate as well. By the turn of the
twentieth century, many American carousels had also been converted to

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electric power, allowing lights and organ music to be incorporated
into the carousels themselves, rather than being operated alongside them.
It was also during this period that carousel makers started
to diversify their steeds. Instead of just painted ponies, they
featured a whole menagerie of zoo animals and mythical creatures.

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The animal's range of motion was also expanded through the
use of bevel gears and offset cranks, which allowed the
animals to move up and down in their now familiar fashion.
All of those eye catching features led to a golden
age for the carousel. In the early nineteen hundreds, its
passengers were still just going in circles, but the ride

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itself had come a long long way. I'm Gave Lucier,
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. You can learn even more
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at TDI HC Show, and if you have any comments

(09:08):
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them along by writing to this day at iHeartMedia dot com.
Thanks to Chandler Mays and Ben Hackett for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in History class.