Like the modern concept of exercising for the sake of health, treadmills are recent inventions whose origins had nothing to do with health and fitness. Treadmill-like devices were first used by the Romans to turn winches and lift heavy objects, and then modified in 1818 by the Victorian inventor William Cubitt to punish prisoners and prevent idleness. For more than a century, English convicts (among them Oscar Wilde) were condemned to trudge for hours a day on enormous steplike treadmills.
