The Zipper is an amusement ride designed by Joseph Brown under Chance Rides in 1968. Popular at carnivals and fairs in the United States, Canada, Australia, Mexico and New Zealand, it features strong vertical G-forces, numerous spins, and a noted sense of unpredictability. Chance Rides had manufactured the ride continuously from 1968 to 2001. In 2015, Chance built a Zipper for Skinner's Amusements. Since its debut, 222 models were produced. Only one of these was specifically designed for an amusement park, Galaxyland, at the West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. However, it was eventually removed due to constant breakdowns as this ride was not designed for full-time operation. Most models of the Zipper follow a similar basic format: A long, rotating, oval boom with a cable around its edge that pulls 12 cars around the ride. Except at peak times, most operators will only fill half of the cars at one time with riders. Like most carnival equipment, the ride is designed to be portable; it can be disassembled onto a truck and transported from site to site. Though a staple of amusement parks and carnivals, the original models of this ride garnered a reputation for being unsafe due to their rough nature, and a series of deaths on the rides in the late 1970s after car doors came unlatched led to a series of revisions, primarily restructuring of the door lock system. Nevertheless, the ride has amassed a cult following over its decades in operation, and was named by Popular Mechanics as one of the strangest amusement park rides in the world. History The Zipper was created by Joseph Brown under Chance Rides in 1968 in Wichita, Kansas, and registered under patent 3,596,905 in 1971. The ride's basic design was based on an earlier ride called The Swooper, invented in 1928, which also featured a series of cars being pulled along a cable around an oblong framework. The central difference between The Swooper and the Zipper was the ability of the Zipper's frame to rotate as the cars travel along it by cable. Description The Zipper has a long oblong frame (the boom) that rotates like a Ferris wheel, with free-flipping cars suspended on off-center axes that move around the sides of the boom via a pulley system. Each passenger capsule is essentially a bench seat that snugly fits two people, built into a compartment of metal mesh