A short history of the ice resurfacer
How a rink owner in Paramount, California built the first ice resurfacing machine in 1949, and how it changed skating everywhere.
Published
Today it is hard to picture a hockey game or a public skating session without a resurfacing machine rolling out between sessions. But the machine is younger than many of the rinks it works on. For decades, keeping ice smooth was slow, cold, manual labor. The story of how that changed centers on one rink owner in Southern California and a problem he got tired of solving by hand.
Smoothing ice before machines
Before there were dedicated resurfacers, rink crews renewed the ice in stages. A common method was to drag a scraper across the ice, often pulled by a tractor, to take off the rough top layer. Workers then shoveled or swept away the shavings, washed the surface and sprayed on fresh water to freeze. Depending on the rink and the crew, the whole job could take well over an hour and several people. For a rink trying to run back-to-back skating sessions, that was a lot of lost time.
Frank Zamboni and the Iceland rink
Frank J. Zamboni was born in 1901 in Eureka, Utah, to Italian immigrant parents. As a young man he moved to Southern California, where he worked with his brother Lawrence in the electrical business. In the late 1920s the brothers built a plant that made block ice, mostly for keeping produce cold during shipping, in the area that later became the city of Paramount.
As electric refrigeration spread, demand for block ice faded. The family looked for another use for their refrigeration know-how, and in 1940 they opened Iceland, a large skating rink in Paramount. It was popular, and that popularity created the problem: the ice needed renewing again and again, and every resurface meant a long gap in sessions.
The first machine, 1949
Frank Zamboni spent much of the 1940s trying to build a single vehicle that could do the whole job in one pass. He went through several experimental designs before getting one to work. The machine he finished in 1949, later known as the Model A, combined the main steps that resurfacing crews had been doing separately. It shaved the ice, gathered the shavings and laid down water to freeze into a fresh surface, all driven by one person. Like many inventions of the period, it was built partly from war-surplus parts.
A resurface that had needed a crew and a long break could now be done by one driver in a fraction of the time. Zamboni received a patent for his design in the early 1950s.
Taking the machine on tour
The machine might have stayed a local curiosity if not for a famous visitor. Sonja Henie, the Norwegian Olympic figure skating champion turned Hollywood star, practiced at Iceland and saw the machine at work. She ordered one for her touring ice show, which meant the resurfacer travelled from arena to arena where rink managers and hockey teams could see it for themselves. Orders followed, and the machine began appearing at rinks around the United States and later around the world.
A company and a name
Frank Zamboni founded a company to build the machines, and it remains family-owned and based in Paramount. Over the decades the design changed a great deal: machines got bigger snow tanks, better water systems, easier controls and, more recently, electric power. But the basic idea of shaving, collecting and flooding in one pass has stayed the same since 1949.
The company's name became so closely tied to the machine that many people use it for any resurfacer. It is a registered trademark, though, and other companies build ice resurfacers as well. That is why rink professionals, and this game, tend to say "ice resurfacer" for the machine in general.
Frank Zamboni died in 1988. As of this writing, the rink where it all started is still open to skaters in Paramount.
Why a simple machine mattered so much
It is easy to underrate how much the resurfacer changed skating. Faster resurfacing meant rinks could run more sessions in a day, which helped rinks stay in business. Consistent, smooth ice made figure skating safer and more precise, and it changed hockey too: a clean sheet lets the puck slide flat and fast, which is why games are paused between periods to resurface. The guide to good skating ice explains why that matters, and how ice resurfacing works goes through what a modern machine does on each pass.
Fresh Ice and the history
Fresh Ice is a small tribute to that idea: one big, slow machine, one driver and one job, done well before the players come out. Its garage even includes a throwback model, Retro '74, alongside The Classic and newer designs. The machines and their unlock goals are listed in the venues and Shed guide.
If the story has you curious about what driving one feels like, try your hand at a rink.