Paramount Iceland

The Paramount Iceland was originally an outdoor skating rink, was later enclosed, which opened in 1940. The arena was later enclosed due to the sun and wind causing a poor skating surface. It was mainly used as a skating rink but its long lasting legacy will be in what the owners of the facility invented, the Zamboni in 1949, with several other efforts going back to 1944. Due to the size of the sheet of ice it was often used for training for figure and speed skating and lead to the need for a machine which could scrape, flood, and squeegee such a large surface quickly and evenly. The previous system would take over an hour to resurface the ice The Zamboni brothers (Frank and Lawrence) also worked on a different type of system to freeze the water in a system that was very different from the normal type composed of a grid work of steel piping beneath the ice. Frank’s idea was to create a flatter and smoother ice sheet by circulating the salt brine in large flat tanks covering the entire area of the ice floor.