Float History
Parade floats were first introduced in the Middle Ages when churches used pageant wagons as movable scenery for passion plays. Artisan guilds were responsible for building the pageant wagons for their specified craft. The wagons were pulled throughout the town, most notably during Corpus Christi in which up to 48 wagons were used, one for each play in the Corpus Christi cycle.
They are so named because the first floats were decorated barges on the River Thames for the Lord Mayor's Show.
Read more about this topic: Float (parade)
Famous quotes containing the words float and/or history:
“There are ... intangible realities which float near us, formless and without words; realities which no one has thought out, and which are excluded for lack of interpreters.”
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)