Clean Sweep!: Frank Zamboni’s Ice Machine

Meet Frank Zamboni, whose determination and persistence led to his invention of the now-famous Zamboni ice-resurfacing machine. A new picture book biography in the award-winning Great Ideas series, Clean Sweep! introduces young readers to an invention that transformed skating.

When Frank Zamboni, along with his brother and cousin, opened their own skating rink in 1940 in Paramount, California, it could take an hour and a half for a crew to resurface the ice. They had to level the surface by shaving down the pits and grooves with a tractor, remove the shavings, wash the ice and find a way to give the rink its shining finish. Skaters became exasperated with the wait, so Frank was determined to do something about it. Could he turn a ninety-minute job for five men into a ten-minute task for only one? Working in the shed behind his ice rink, Frank drew designs and built models of machines he hoped would do the job. For nine years, he worked on his invention, each model an improvement on the one before. Finally, in 1949, Frank tested the Model A, which cleaned the ice in one sweep around the rink. The rest is history.