Lv3 History A: Punishment
The constant thud（ドサっという音）underneath your feet, the constrained（束縛された） space, and the monotony（単調さ）of going nowhere fast. It feels like hours gone by, but it's only been eleven minutes, and you wonder, "Why am I torturing myself? This things has got to be considered a cruel and unusual punishment." Actually, that's exactly what it is or was. You see, in the 1800s, treadmills（ランニングマシン）were created to punish English prisoners.
At the time, the English prison system was abysmally（ひどく悪く）bad. Execution（処刑） and deportation（国外追放）were often the punishment of choice, and those who were locked away faced hours of solitude（ひとりでいること）in filthy cells. So social movements led by religious groups, philanthropies（慈善事業）, and celebrities, like Charles Dickens, sought to change these dire（ひどい）conditions and help reform the prisoners.
When their movement succeeded, entire prisons were remodeled and new forms of rehabilitation, such as the treadmill, were introduced. Here's how the original version, invented in 1818 by English engineer Sir William Cubitt, worked.
Prisoners stepped on 24 spokes（段）of a large paddle wheel（外車輪）. As the wheel turned, the prisoner was forced to keep stepping up or risk falling off, similar to modern stepper machines. Meanwhile, the rotation made gears pump our water, crush grain, or power mills, which is where the name "treadmill" originated.
These devices were seen as a fantastic way of whipping（刺激して〜にする）prisoners into shape, and that added benefit of powering mills helped to rebuild a British economy decimated（衰退した）by the Napoleonic Wars. It was a win for all concerned, except the prisoners.
It's estimated that, on average, prisoners spent six or so hours a day on treadmills, the equivalent of climbing 5000 to 14000 feet. 14000 feet is roughly Mount Everest's halfway point. Imagine doing that five days a week with little food. Cubitt's idea quickly spread across the British Empire and America. Within a decade of its creation, over 50 English prisons boasted（自慢する）a treadmill, and America, a similar amount.
Unsurprisingly, the exertion（激しい活動）combined with poor nutrition saw many prisoners suffer breakdowns（衰弱）and injuries, not that prison guards seemed to care. In 1824, New York prison guard James Hardie credited（〜はーのおかげだと思う）the device with taming（飼い慣らすこと）his more boisterous（騒々しい）inmates（囚人）, writing that "monotonous steadiness, and not its severity… constitutes its terror," a quote many still agree with.
And treadmills lasted in England until the late 19th century, when they were banned for being excessively cruel under the Prison's Act of 1898. But of course the torture device returned with a vengeance（まさしく）, this time targeting the unsuspecting（疑われていない）public.
In 1911, a treadmill patent was registered in the US, and by 1952, the forerunner（前身）for today's modern treadmill had been created. When the jogging craze（ブーム）hit the US in the 1970s, the treadmill was thrust（ぐっと押される）back into the limelight（脚光）as an easy and convenient way to improve aerobic（有酸素の）fitness, and lose unwanted pounds, which, to be fair, it's pretty good at doing. And the machine has maintained its popularity since.
So the next time you voluntarily subject（さらす）yourself to what was once a cruel and unusual punishment, just be glad you can control when you'll hop off.
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