In 1965, Toomer joined Arrow Developments and was hired to work on the design of the Runaway Mine Ride, the world's first all-steel coaster. Toomer's tool of choice (and necessity): the slide rule.

"A big part of the attraction of roller coasters is that people know that unlike with hang-gliding or skydiving, the train is definitely going to come back," Toomer says.

In more than 30 years in the amusement industry, the recently retired Toomer designed more than 80 steel coasters worldwide. In 1975 he built one of the first looping coasters of the modern era--the Corkscrew at Knott's Berry Farm (Buena Park, Calif.), followed the next year by one at Cedar Point (Sandusky, Ohio). Other feathers in his hard hat include Cedar Point's beloved Magnum XL-200 (1989), an out-and-back coaster that was the first to top 200 feet, and also the first suspended coasters, Big Bad Wolf (1984) at Busch Gardens, Williamsburg, Va., and Cedar Point's Iron Dragon (1987).

Toomer became president of Arrow Dynamics in 1986, at about  the time that the company was developing the innovative Pipeline coaster, on which the cars execute a snap roll of 182 degrees around their longitudinal axis. Unfortunately, the highly complex project ran out of funds before it could be realized as anything more than a prototype. In the 1990s he held posts as chairman of the board and as director.

"I don't ride the things I design though," Toomer says. "I've had a bad motion sickness problem since I was a little kid. But I've ridden enough of them to know what happens and how it feels."

For his innovations in roller coasters, Ron Toomer deserves to be named as a Great Mind of the roller coaster and amusement park industry.

Credits: Encyclopedia Britannica