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Advertisement for the Flexible Flyer, “The Sled that Steers,” circa 1910.
Credit: The Old Sled Works Museum
In 1889, Philadelphian Samuel Leeds Allen, a farm machine equipment manufacturer, filed a patent for the Flexible Flyer, the world's first steerable runner sled. Allen developed and tested his sled in Moorestown, New Jersey and at Westtown School in Chester County, Pennsylvania, where he had gone to high school.