August 15, 2022 • 25 mins
We put man on the moon before we invented the wheeled suitcase. Why did it take so long? Find out in this episode of Patented: History of Inventions, where host Dallas Campbell is joined by expert Katrine Marçal, whose research has revealed an intriguing hidden chapter in the invention story of rolling luggage.
If you're interested in the stories behind the world's greatest inventions — from the mighty steam train to the humble condom - subscribe to Patented: History of Inventions, created by our friends over at History Hit.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey, it's Jacob Goldstein and I've got a bonus
episode for you today. It is about the surprisingly intriguing
story of the invention of the wheeled suitcase. It's from
the podcast Patented History of Inventions. I really enjoyed it,
and I hope you like it too, So it's kind
of like an example of how stupid we are sometimes
(00:37):
when it comes to innovation, that we managed to put
two men on the moon before we put wheels on suitcases.
Sometimes a product comes along and you can't help but think,
how did it take so long for someone to come
up with that? A prime example, it wasn't until nineteen
(01:00):
seventy two that Bernard D. Sado patented the first wheel suitcase.
And this is centuries, of course after the invention of
the wheel deck aid, since luggage had become an everyday item,
it just seems so obvious. The story of the rolling
suitcase has become somewhat of a favorite anecdote for people
like me to wheel out when trying to inject some
(01:22):
hoobrist into conversations about invention and innovation. Sometimes the most
obvious ideas simply elude us. And whilst this is a
good lesson for us all. I also think that this
framing misses some key context. Yes, the technology existed, but
the need for easily movable luggage didn't exist much before
(01:42):
the disappearance of porters from our trained stations and the
dawn of an age of affordable mass tourism. Aren't those
giant airports with their smooth flows just calling out for wheels?
But today's guest, Katrine Marsal, author of the book Mothers
of Invention, suggests that there's an even bigger gap in
this story. Her research suggests there were social blind spots
(02:06):
that prevented us from widely adopting wheeled luggage, something that
she discovered existed long before its official invention date back
in the nineteen seventies. I'm Dallas Campbell and this is
patented History of Inventions, a podcast from History Hits. Welcome
(02:42):
to the show, Katrine Musselle. Love you to have you here.
Katrine of course, writer, speaker, economist, well, writer about economics,
and author of the book Mothers of Invention. How good
ideas get ignored in an economy bill for men? That's me, Yes,
thank you, that is you, that is you. Well listen,
Thanks for coming on. I've been really looking forward to
this one because the story of the wheel suitcase, it's
(03:06):
kind of one of those stories that always gets trotted
out when anyone's talking innovation. Everyone's like, well, wheel suitcases,
And we've had wheels for a billion years, and we've
had suitcases for a billion years, And why did no
one put wheels on a suitcase before nineteen seventy Well
not exactly a billion years, but well, not exactly a
billion years, but around about a billion years. So why
don't we just talk about the kind of received story,
(03:27):
the one that everyone trots out, and then we can
drill down a little bit deeper into actually what's really
going on behind this? Okay, sure, Well, so we've had
wheels for five thousand years. Yeah, that's what I meant.
I was exaggerating for effect. We've had wheels for five
thousand years, and it's one of these you know, we
(03:48):
think of it as, you know, the big invention that
changed everything, kind of did I guess. I mean, they're
pretty useful. Wheels did, but it took longer than you think, right,
you know, you think that you know, we have this
sort of cartoon idea of it that somebody just sort of, oh,
let's have wheels, and then sort of everything had wheels immediately,
and everybody realized and that's not really our innovation works.
(04:10):
You know, you need to have a lot of other
things for wheels to work, like roads and roads are helpful,
Roads are helpful, Somebody like some kind of system for
maintaining roads, axles, you know, there's there's a lot of
things actually, But leaving that aside, the story of the
wheel suitcase, the way it's normally told is that we've
had wheels for five thousand years. We've applied this technology
(04:31):
of the wheel to a lot of other things, you know,
cars and bicycles and ferries wheels and hamster wheels, but
not the suitcase. So we didn't get wheels on suitcases
until nineteen seventy two. And that's how we normally tell
this story. So it's kind of like an example of
how stupid we are sometimes when it comes to innovation,
that we managed to put two men on the moon
(04:53):
before we put wheels on suitcases. And so the nineteen
seventy two that was the pattern. So I think it
was a couple of years before, wasn't I can't remember
the guys that Bernard. Bernard say, yeah, that's idea. Seventy
two is when it's approved. So it's the first commercially
successful pattern here. And just tell our listeners how did
that pattern happen? What was his story, what was his background. Well,
(05:13):
so he was an American executive in the luggage industry,
so somebody paid to think about her to make suitcases better, right, Yeah,
And he was coming back from holiday with his family.
This is a few years before, so the end of
the nineteen sixties, and he is dragging these suitcases through
customs and he looks up and he sees somebody who's
(05:37):
probably working there sort of pulling something heavy on a
platform with wheels. And he looks up at, you know,
at this thing, and he looks at his own sort
of suitcase, and he looks up at his wife and
he says, that's what suitcases need, wheels, And the clouds
parted and the sun and a choir of angels started
singing Hallelujah at least right. But he then went back
(06:00):
to Massachusetts and he screwed off these sort of cast
of wheels from a I think it was a wardrobe,
and he attached them to a suitcase that's right. Yeah, yeah,
and that was so we always think, yeah, wheel suitcase
invented in nineteen seventy, but that's um. It was kind
of the wheels on the suitcase were on the four
corners of the suitcase, and there was like a handle
like a kind of yeah, like a leish, exactly like
(06:22):
a leish. And then there was another innovation sometime later
when you've got the telescopic handle and the suitcase was
sort of flipped up on its end and you had
the two wheels and low and behold that carry on
wheelie suitcase as we know it was born. And I
can't remember when that one was. That was in nineteen
eighty seven, so almost a billion years after almost because
you think, really, I mean, it's not such a huge
(06:43):
thing because those first suitcases that Bernard say, don't bless him,
you know, invented, they were not that great because they
kept sort of falling over, and you could even buy
a kind of stabilizers. You could get stabilizers for your suitcase.
That's right. I used to have one. I remember I
used to have a really hard green suitcase that had
four wheels and a leash and it was rubbish. How
old are you, I'm one hundred years billion years old. Actually, funnily,
(07:06):
if I was born in nineteen seventy, the year of
the wheelsuitcase, if you're Bernard Duda, So from nineteen seventy two,
it takes until nineteen eighty seven until somebody figures out, well, actually,
let's just turn this thing around and it won't tip over.
And that was Robert Platt. So he created what we
now think of us a rolling suitcase. All right, So
that's the kind of story, and it sort of was that.
(07:28):
I mean, these people existed and things existed, but a
little bit of research, a little bit of googling reveals
that people have been designing wheeled suitcases forever. I mean
I was looking back and there was one in nineteen
twenty five, someone had a pattern for a wheelsuitcase. And
so what's going on? Like why were all these sort
of proto wheel suitcases not happening? Like why did they
not exist? People had the idea? So why are we
(07:50):
celebrating the invention in nineteen seventy you know, I mean
that's what it's like with innovation, right, you know a
lot of people tend to have a similar idea around
the same time. And you know, in this case we
count the first commercially successful pattern. So I mean, that
is one thing, but your point is correct. Other people
had thought of this before. What I find really interesting
(08:11):
and which didn't take me that long when I was
working on the book, was to see that there is
a sort of very gender pattern to all of this.
So there were quite a few niche products in different
ways applying the technology of the wheel to the rolling suitcase.
So it's anything from these sort of strap on things
with wheels that you could put on your suitcase, two
(08:34):
actual you know, luggage with wheels, and so many of
these were actually niche products for women. Why was that
because and this, you know, I argue in the book
is the big reason actually the solution to this mystery.
You know, why did it take us so long to
put wheels on suitcases? There was this really strong idea
(08:56):
that it's unmanly to roll a suitcase. And that's why,
even though these ideas existed, and there were you know,
reasonably successful niche products for women using the technology of
the wheel to make rolling a suitcase easier, the luggage
industry as a whole didn't think this was anything that
would go anywhere. And even after Bernard Saide of invent
(09:18):
this rolling suitcase, at first, no American department store wants
to sell it because they think there's no market. Men
will never roll a suitcase and women are too small
of a market. That's really interesting. It's funny actually, because
I've just got a picture here. I'm going to show
it to It's on my phone, So that was I
don't know if you can see on my camera. Yeah,
I haven't seen that before. So this was nineteen twenty five,
(09:39):
and the inventor is called s Mastrotonio. I've pronounced their
mastaurant anyway. It's a woman in an elegant stripy dress
pushing a wheeled suitcase, and that's a sort of nineteen
twenty five. So I'm just wondering, yes, with this idea
sort of designed for women because this is not what
men do. Yeah, there is like a long story of
us thinking that wheels around manly. Even in Arthurian poetry.
(10:05):
I talk about this in the book. There's sort of
an instance when when Lancer Lot has to get on
a cart with wheels to find Guineava and he can't
do this because a night has to be on a
horse or at least standing on his own two legs.
He can't be on something with wheels, really yeah, yeah,
But like guys like cars, and this is before cars.
(10:26):
This is before cars, right, and the Roman chariots and
ben Hurd that's pretty ridiculous Roman chariot cars. There. It's
not like a constant, but there are there are these
ideas around and there was certainly a period when sort
of going in a carriage was considered to be you know, feminine,
and then going on horseback. So there are sort of
strains of this. But actually when it comes to luggage,
(10:47):
it's all about, you know, masculinity has to always be proven,
and one way that a man has to prove that
he's a man is by carrying heavy things. This is
just a really kind of strong opinion that the luggage
industry has, along with an opinion that they are selling
luggage to men who are the ones who travel. Women
don't travel alone. If a woman levels, she will travel
(11:10):
with a man who will then have to carry her
bag for her. So that woman that you show me
on the picture, she's something that the industry considers to
be quite rare, which is a woman who travels on
her own. And even in the nineteen seventies, the first
rolling suitcases work quite heavily marketed towards you know, like
in nineteen seventies businesswoman in a corduvoice suit. And I suppose,
(11:31):
you know, when we're talking about those gender stereotypes, I mean,
is it that women push prams and push chairs and
when we think about wheels, we tend to think or
perhaps the industry would have tend to have thought of that. Yeah,
and I suppose that a luggage on wheels maybe quite
similar visually in a way. Yeah. And I think there's
also something about that men are not sort of allowed
to demand or want comfort in a way. You know,
(11:54):
it's sort of the trend. I demand comfort at all opportunities,
but it has to be like hard, right, it has
to really. Yeah, Okay, you're the exception. But there's a
lot of these things. I mean, even you know, roofs
on cars used to be considered unmanly, right, you know,
a real man is not allowed to complain about getting
wet in the rain when he's driving his car. So
the first cars for women that were first created with
(12:17):
the roof. So I think there are these things and
wheels on suitcases is one example of this. When you
mentioned wheels right at the start, and you said, absolutely correctly,
you know, it's not just a wheel. You need other
things to go with wheels. You need axles, and you
need rows. Was it not the case that part of
the reason the innovation of the wheel suitcase was comparatively slow,
(12:37):
we didn't have the architecture because airports at that time,
before the nineteen seventies or right about that, were small
and they didn't have smooth surfaces. I mean, presumably as
airports expanded and got bigger and bigger, suddenly there is
a need for wheeled suitcases that wasn't there before. Definitely,
I mean that's a very good point. Of course, this
product happened when air travel started happening to a larger extent.
(12:59):
But it wasn't just that. If you look in newspaper
archives from the sixties and the fifties, there is like
a lot of complaining about how tricky it is to
carry suitcases. There are no porters anymore. The luggage industry
needs to innovate. We need handles made in softer fabrics.
I mean, it's all there because travel was already changing
(13:22):
and you did have buses, you have trained, so yes,
you know, the way we think of rolling suitcases against
these sort of smooth airport flaws, that was not an option.
But it's still heavy and people were certainly complaining about this,
you know, changing trains in Madrid and dragging your suitcases.
So it was a problem that people were aware of,
(13:42):
and actually it was unthinkable for the luggage industry that
men would adopt this particular solution to it, but then
they did. Yeah, but that's the other thing, I mean,
the speed of it. I mean, we all have them.
I don't remember ever there being a case where there
was a sort of backlash against wheelsuitcases because they were
deemed to be UNMATCHO. It's just there. It seemed to
happen very very quickly. There were no wheelsuitcases, and suddenly
(14:04):
there were wheelsuitcases, and everything seems to kind of evolve
in step with so, like you say, Porter's kind of vanished,
airport flaws got smoother and uncarpeted in order to do that,
And so there were all those different things happening in
synchronicity together at the same time. Because it did seem
to happen pretty rapidly after eighty seven, certainly, But I
(14:25):
mean you do have, like, first this sort of idea
that men can't roll suitcases need to disappear, and then women,
I mean, will you also have during this period, which
obviously I emphasize in the book, is that you know,
women come out onto the former labor market in greater numbers.
Women change business travel during the nineteen eighties in large
parts of the world. And that's not just you know,
(14:46):
suitcases with wheels. Women were the early adopters. It was
marketed to them. Obviously, a woman on a business trip
is a woman who travels by herself, right, not with
her family, So it was a product for her. And
women change business travel in you know, even like better
lighting in hotel bathrooms. And I mean a lot of
things changed because women started traveling like that as well,
(15:08):
and the rolling suit case was one of them. But
you know, you're right, I mean, how quickly then goes
from something that's unthinkable for men to have to being
I think now most people would think of it as
more of a mail product if you forced them to pick,
because it's so associated with like a suited businessman, right,
I guess so, And I think Robert Platt, the guy
(15:28):
who were talking about earlier, who invented to carry on
bagg as we know it with a telescopic handle and
that sort of two wheels. I think he was a pilot.
I think it was that right. Yeah, he started marketing
two sort of airline crews, and then you know, they
were quite good marketing because they would sort of walk
from the airport looking smart with these bags, and people
started thinking, oh, I want one. I wonder if it's possible.
(15:49):
Can you even buy a suitcase without wheels? Now? I
think it must be thing. Yeah, it must be tricky.
You know, it's completely disrupted the whole global luggage industry.
And you know that's what we think of when we
hear the word suitcase. Now, so yeah, there you go. Actually,
many years ago I did a program about wheel suitcases
and someone had invented I can't remember them in the company,
but they'd invented to sort of motorized wheelsuit case, which
(16:10):
was very fancy that I don't think that called on
just a bit too much fat Well, you don't know,
I mean it might, yeah, I've seen something like that. Look,
those robot ones they are supposed to walk behind you, right, Yeah,
and actually for kids as well, you know kids, the
idea that actually, well why don't we have a wheel
suitcase that kids can sit on and turn it into
a kind of fairground, right, Yes, so they're brilliant. Let's
(16:30):
just a win win. It's a win win. Let me
just ask you as well. I mean, you talked about
lighting in bathrooms and stuff, and your book you'd mentioned
lots of different things. I suppose words of gender has
sort of influenced innovation or where gender has held back innovation.
I'm just wondering what other examples you had where that's
the case. Yeah, I mean, so we mentioned cars, So
I mean that's quite interesting because it's such a ideas
(16:53):
of cars and car market is a very gendered thing
for different reasons. And where I talk about in the
book is electric cars, who were around already at the
dawn of the automobile era and the in the late
eighteen hundreds you could phone up an electric taxi company
and in and they would come pick you up. And
what's interesting is how electric cars started to be marketed
(17:15):
towards women because there was this idea that a car
that was slower, more comfortable, safer was feminine, So it
began to be marketed towards wealthy women and wasn't even
seen as almost like a like a car, more like
a drawing room on wheel, some kind of extension of
the feminine sphere of the home. See that's what I
(17:36):
want in a car. I want a drawing room on wheels,
you know, with sort of drapery and in build crystal
vases for flowers they had, Do you want that? Nice?
Very civilized? Well, actually that's interesting because people again a
bit like wheel suitcases. People like you say, site electric cars.
We've had them for ages. And again, you know, I
tend to think, well, isn't it just because battery technology
is a bit rubbish? Yes, that was the main reason
(17:58):
why electric cars then disappeared and we built a whole
world for petrol driven cars. So gender wasn't the main reason.
I don't say that in the book, but ultimately historians
they talk about battery issues. There were a couple of
big investments into sort of business models around electric car
technology in the US that didn't work out for other reasons,
(18:18):
so the market lost appetite. But then they also talk
about other cultural factors, and what I say in the
book is you know, you should call those other cultural
factors what they are, which is gender bias, because when
something becomes seen as for women or a drawing room
on wheels, then many male consumers don't want it. So
the electric car industry held back the size of its
(18:40):
own market. It's probably fair to say, though, that when
you talk about the sort of gender bias in terms
of innovation to a lot of people, it's just going
to seem invisible. They're going to be like, well, what
do you mean, because we're so used to the way
things are. It's only when it's pointed out you start
to make connections and see these gender biases everywhere. Is
that fair? Yeah? I think we tend to think of
(19:01):
the forces of innovation and technology as these sort of neutral,
incredibly powerful, rational things that are just sort of pushing everything.
You know, the economy, US society, our lives so long,
and that's not really how it works. You know, we
are the ones inventing and building machines and funding machines
and buying machines and not just machines but products, and
(19:23):
we come into all of these activities shaped by our biases,
and I think gender is a really big one. Here.
The trouble is of biases. They're really easy to see
in other people and not very easy to see in
yourself pointing out your biases as well. I'm not biased,
of course, I'm not bias. I'm absolutely rational and completely
open minded and down the middle, and I'm absolutely perfect,
which in my case is true. But everyone else I've
(19:44):
noticed is very, very biased, very biased. Well, I suppose
that's going to be true. I suppose when we think
about history of inventions, particularly I don't know, the Victorians,
our minds turn to steam engines and such. It does
tend to be a very male dominated world, not for
the fact that men are more creative, but just the
way that society and institutions were set up. Yeah, not
(20:05):
just that, I mean, I think I would go further.
I would say that sort of our definition technology has
almost always followed up a definition of masculinity or what
men do. Sort, when men do something, it's it's an invention,
you know, when women invent in software, which is you know,
that's what the whole economy is run on. Now, it's
a female invention. But back then it wasn't considered to
(20:26):
be technology. Men were doing hardware, which was like the
serious stuff, and women just happen to invent and develop
and largely develop this thing called software, and women are
written out a lot from the history of innovations, you know,
the historians who talk about you know, why do we
talk about the Bronze Age and the Iron age and
not the ceramic age or the flax age. You know,
(20:48):
ceramics or things that have to do with cloth. That's
also technology. That's also innovation, but we don't think of
it like that. And it's been largely developed and invented
by women. So women get written out of this history
of innovation, and when we study it, then we are
basically studying our own absence, which doesn't make women feel that,
(21:08):
you know, being an innovator is something, it's an identity
that's available to them. Yeah, it's not good. No, it's
an interesting Well, actually, we did a program about the
history of the space suits and I'll see Dover, which
was a division of PLATEX of course, used to make
brows and girdles, and actually the space suits that the
Apollo astronauts wore on the moon. Of course, we're all
handstitched by these fantastic women. These seamstresses from Delaware who
(21:30):
were amazing, And it's one of those stories that kind
of got lost the annals of innovation and invention, the
fact that you know, these women who are constructing these
extraordinary I don't want to say outfits, because they're more
than outfits. There are sort of wearable spacecraft. And I
guess it's why has that happened? And is it changing?
Are our attitudes towards innovation and invention changing? Now? Do
you think are are we still in a very male world? Well?
(21:50):
I think if you just sort of do a simple
exercise of following the money. So I mean, I'm Swedish.
In Sweden, one percent of all venture capital goes to women.
In Britain it's the same, it's one percent, and you know,
and that's mainly white women. I think black British women
gets zero points zero two sentible venture capital. And obviously
(22:11):
there are other ways of funding new ideas and innovations
than venture capital, but venture capital is certainly very powerful
and men do have a monopoly on this type of funding,
which means that that's not just a problem for today,
that's a problem for the next twenty twenty five years,
because it means that you know, the big innovations, the
big business models that will define large sectors of the
(22:33):
economy are all being developed by men with women absent.
So it's still a problem. I want to sort of
end on a little bit more about wheel suitcases that
they sort of reached their zenith. It defines zenith. Well,
is it like we've reached the pinnacle of that's it
for wheelsuitcase? There are no more innovations for wheel suitcases.
That's it. Well, that would be like famous last words, right,
(22:54):
I mean, but the history of innovation tells us that
there's always something coming. Well, I think there's become this
kind of standardized size of wheelsuitcases. It's that you know,
when you go into an airport and you've got your
wheelsuitcase and they've got like a measuring thing and it's
got to fit in there. Presumably as well as gender,
economics must have something to do with suitcase size, because
you know you're carrying on lugge. It has to be
this size in order to fit in the stow way,
(23:15):
and the bigger it is, the fewer seats you can sell.
Therefore they want them to be as small as possible. Yeah, no, absolutely,
it feels that they've figured out the ultimate size and
we've adapted to that. I mean, I think is this
the end? I'm sure there be some kind of development,
and travel will certainly change things, so I don't dare
to say this is it, but I do think it's
(23:36):
worth having this in mind when you see a rolling suitcase,
to just think of this sort of very gendered resistance
against the product that was there for so long and
now we take it for granted. And if if anything,
I think it's a reminder of how, you know, incredibly
serious we take our ideas of gender. You know, oh,
(23:56):
a man cannot roll a suitcase. Obviously, this product is
completely ridiculous, no man will ever buy it, and then
you know, two decades later it is something that every
business man has and nobody thinks of it. So it's
also I think a story of how gender roles can
change very quickly, and obviously how they can hold innovation
(24:18):
back and often do. Brilliant Kaden, thank you so much
for coming. I will never look at my wheels. Actually
that's the thing that really annoys me about oil shoot crass.
First of all, the handles always break. They always get
to a point where they don't telescope enough, and I
find myself having to lean over. Yeah, and at some
point the wheel always they get stuff caught in them
and they break, and I find them quite frustrating. It's annoying.
(24:39):
Then be a real man carry instead. Maybe I'll yeah,
maybe I'll go back in time. Maybe I'll become a
macho person, have a really heavy leather suitcase. Yeah. Well,
actually doing what others have my own port they'll just
carry for me. That is always a solution. Hire, it'd
be much more civilized. Thank you very much, Thank you,
(25:02):
thank you very much for joining us today. I hope
you enjoyed the episode. By the way, if there's an
invention story that you'd like to know more about, you've
got a favorite invention story you'd like me to cover
on the podcast, do get in touch. You can find
me at Dallas Campbell on Twitter, or stop me in
the street if you see me wandering about. I am
back every Wednesday and Sunday with brand new episodes, So
(25:22):
make sure that you subscribe to the series. Make sure
you leave us a nice review if you've been enjoying it.
Coming up next, we have an episode all about how
the smallest objects can make the biggest difference. I'll see
you then. That was an episode of Patented, The History
(25:43):
of Inventions. They've done podcasts on everything from condoms to
steam trains. Patented is from our friends over at History
Hit and it is available wherever
Pushkin. Hey, it's Jacob Goldstein and I've got a bonus
episode for you today. It is about the surprisingly intriguing
story of the invention of the wheeled suitcase. It's from
the podcast Patented History of Inventions. I really enjoyed it,
and I hope you like it too, So it's kind
of like an example of how stupid we are sometimes
(00:37):
when it comes to innovation, that we managed to put
two men on the moon before we put wheels on suitcases.
Sometimes a product comes along and you can't help but think,
how did it take so long for someone to come
up with that? A prime example, it wasn't until nineteen
(01:00):
seventy two that Bernard D. Sado patented the first wheel suitcase.
And this is centuries, of course after the invention of
the wheel deck aid, since luggage had become an everyday item,
it just seems so obvious. The story of the rolling
suitcase has become somewhat of a favorite anecdote for people
like me to wheel out when trying to inject some
(01:22):
hoobrist into conversations about invention and innovation. Sometimes the most
obvious ideas simply elude us. And whilst this is a
good lesson for us all. I also think that this
framing misses some key context. Yes, the technology existed, but
the need for easily movable luggage didn't exist much before
(01:42):
the disappearance of porters from our trained stations and the
dawn of an age of affordable mass tourism. Aren't those
giant airports with their smooth flows just calling out for wheels?
But today's guest, Katrine Marsal, author of the book Mothers
of Invention, suggests that there's an even bigger gap in
this story. Her research suggests there were social blind spots
(02:06):
that prevented us from widely adopting wheeled luggage, something that
she discovered existed long before its official invention date back
in the nineteen seventies. I'm Dallas Campbell and this is
patented History of Inventions, a podcast from History Hits. Welcome
(02:42):
to the show, Katrine Musselle. Love you to have you here.
Katrine of course, writer, speaker, economist, well, writer about economics,
and author of the book Mothers of Invention. How good
ideas get ignored in an economy bill for men? That's me, Yes,
thank you, that is you, that is you. Well listen,
Thanks for coming on. I've been really looking forward to
this one because the story of the wheel suitcase, it's
(03:06):
kind of one of those stories that always gets trotted
out when anyone's talking innovation. Everyone's like, well, wheel suitcases,
And we've had wheels for a billion years, and we've
had suitcases for a billion years, And why did no
one put wheels on a suitcase before nineteen seventy Well
not exactly a billion years, but well, not exactly a
billion years, but around about a billion years. So why
don't we just talk about the kind of received story,
(03:27):
the one that everyone trots out, and then we can
drill down a little bit deeper into actually what's really
going on behind this? Okay, sure, Well, so we've had
wheels for five thousand years. Yeah, that's what I meant.
I was exaggerating for effect. We've had wheels for five
thousand years, and it's one of these you know, we
(03:48):
think of it as, you know, the big invention that
changed everything, kind of did I guess. I mean, they're
pretty useful. Wheels did, but it took longer than you think, right,
you know, you think that you know, we have this
sort of cartoon idea of it that somebody just sort of, oh,
let's have wheels, and then sort of everything had wheels immediately,
and everybody realized and that's not really our innovation works.
(04:10):
You know, you need to have a lot of other
things for wheels to work, like roads and roads are helpful,
Roads are helpful, Somebody like some kind of system for
maintaining roads, axles, you know, there's there's a lot of
things actually, But leaving that aside, the story of the
wheel suitcase, the way it's normally told is that we've
had wheels for five thousand years. We've applied this technology
(04:31):
of the wheel to a lot of other things, you know,
cars and bicycles and ferries wheels and hamster wheels, but
not the suitcase. So we didn't get wheels on suitcases
until nineteen seventy two. And that's how we normally tell
this story. So it's kind of like an example of
how stupid we are sometimes when it comes to innovation,
that we managed to put two men on the moon
(04:53):
before we put wheels on suitcases. And so the nineteen
seventy two that was the pattern. So I think it
was a couple of years before, wasn't I can't remember
the guys that Bernard. Bernard say, yeah, that's idea. Seventy
two is when it's approved. So it's the first commercially
successful pattern here. And just tell our listeners how did
that pattern happen? What was his story, what was his background. Well,
(05:13):
so he was an American executive in the luggage industry,
so somebody paid to think about her to make suitcases better, right, Yeah,
And he was coming back from holiday with his family.
This is a few years before, so the end of
the nineteen sixties, and he is dragging these suitcases through
customs and he looks up and he sees somebody who's
(05:37):
probably working there sort of pulling something heavy on a
platform with wheels. And he looks up at, you know,
at this thing, and he looks at his own sort
of suitcase, and he looks up at his wife and
he says, that's what suitcases need, wheels, And the clouds
parted and the sun and a choir of angels started
singing Hallelujah at least right. But he then went back
(06:00):
to Massachusetts and he screwed off these sort of cast
of wheels from a I think it was a wardrobe,
and he attached them to a suitcase that's right. Yeah, yeah,
and that was so we always think, yeah, wheel suitcase
invented in nineteen seventy, but that's um. It was kind
of the wheels on the suitcase were on the four
corners of the suitcase, and there was like a handle
like a kind of yeah, like a leish, exactly like
(06:22):
a leish. And then there was another innovation sometime later
when you've got the telescopic handle and the suitcase was
sort of flipped up on its end and you had
the two wheels and low and behold that carry on
wheelie suitcase as we know it was born. And I
can't remember when that one was. That was in nineteen
eighty seven, so almost a billion years after almost because
you think, really, I mean, it's not such a huge
(06:43):
thing because those first suitcases that Bernard say, don't bless him,
you know, invented, they were not that great because they
kept sort of falling over, and you could even buy
a kind of stabilizers. You could get stabilizers for your suitcase.
That's right. I used to have one. I remember I
used to have a really hard green suitcase that had
four wheels and a leash and it was rubbish. How
old are you, I'm one hundred years billion years old. Actually, funnily,
(07:06):
if I was born in nineteen seventy, the year of
the wheelsuitcase, if you're Bernard Duda, So from nineteen seventy two,
it takes until nineteen eighty seven until somebody figures out, well, actually,
let's just turn this thing around and it won't tip over.
And that was Robert Platt. So he created what we
now think of us a rolling suitcase. All right, So
that's the kind of story, and it sort of was that.
(07:28):
I mean, these people existed and things existed, but a
little bit of research, a little bit of googling reveals
that people have been designing wheeled suitcases forever. I mean
I was looking back and there was one in nineteen
twenty five, someone had a pattern for a wheelsuitcase. And
so what's going on? Like why were all these sort
of proto wheel suitcases not happening? Like why did they
not exist? People had the idea? So why are we
(07:50):
celebrating the invention in nineteen seventy you know, I mean
that's what it's like with innovation, right, you know a
lot of people tend to have a similar idea around
the same time. And you know, in this case we
count the first commercially successful pattern. So I mean, that
is one thing, but your point is correct. Other people
had thought of this before. What I find really interesting
(08:11):
and which didn't take me that long when I was
working on the book, was to see that there is
a sort of very gender pattern to all of this.
So there were quite a few niche products in different
ways applying the technology of the wheel to the rolling suitcase.
So it's anything from these sort of strap on things
with wheels that you could put on your suitcase, two
(08:34):
actual you know, luggage with wheels, and so many of
these were actually niche products for women. Why was that
because and this, you know, I argue in the book
is the big reason actually the solution to this mystery.
You know, why did it take us so long to
put wheels on suitcases? There was this really strong idea
(08:56):
that it's unmanly to roll a suitcase. And that's why,
even though these ideas existed, and there were you know,
reasonably successful niche products for women using the technology of
the wheel to make rolling a suitcase easier, the luggage
industry as a whole didn't think this was anything that
would go anywhere. And even after Bernard Saide of invent
(09:18):
this rolling suitcase, at first, no American department store wants
to sell it because they think there's no market. Men
will never roll a suitcase and women are too small
of a market. That's really interesting. It's funny actually, because
I've just got a picture here. I'm going to show
it to It's on my phone, So that was I
don't know if you can see on my camera. Yeah,
I haven't seen that before. So this was nineteen twenty five,
(09:39):
and the inventor is called s Mastrotonio. I've pronounced their
mastaurant anyway. It's a woman in an elegant stripy dress
pushing a wheeled suitcase, and that's a sort of nineteen
twenty five. So I'm just wondering, yes, with this idea
sort of designed for women because this is not what
men do. Yeah, there is like a long story of
us thinking that wheels around manly. Even in Arthurian poetry.
(10:05):
I talk about this in the book. There's sort of
an instance when when Lancer Lot has to get on
a cart with wheels to find Guineava and he can't
do this because a night has to be on a
horse or at least standing on his own two legs.
He can't be on something with wheels, really yeah, yeah,
But like guys like cars, and this is before cars.
(10:26):
This is before cars, right, and the Roman chariots and
ben Hurd that's pretty ridiculous Roman chariot cars. There. It's
not like a constant, but there are there are these
ideas around and there was certainly a period when sort
of going in a carriage was considered to be you know, feminine,
and then going on horseback. So there are sort of
strains of this. But actually when it comes to luggage,
(10:47):
it's all about, you know, masculinity has to always be proven,
and one way that a man has to prove that
he's a man is by carrying heavy things. This is
just a really kind of strong opinion that the luggage
industry has, along with an opinion that they are selling
luggage to men who are the ones who travel. Women
don't travel alone. If a woman levels, she will travel
(11:10):
with a man who will then have to carry her
bag for her. So that woman that you show me
on the picture, she's something that the industry considers to
be quite rare, which is a woman who travels on
her own. And even in the nineteen seventies, the first
rolling suitcases work quite heavily marketed towards you know, like
in nineteen seventies businesswoman in a corduvoice suit. And I suppose,
(11:31):
you know, when we're talking about those gender stereotypes, I mean,
is it that women push prams and push chairs and
when we think about wheels, we tend to think or
perhaps the industry would have tend to have thought of that. Yeah,
and I suppose that a luggage on wheels maybe quite
similar visually in a way. Yeah. And I think there's
also something about that men are not sort of allowed
to demand or want comfort in a way. You know,
(11:54):
it's sort of the trend. I demand comfort at all opportunities,
but it has to be like hard, right, it has
to really. Yeah, Okay, you're the exception. But there's a
lot of these things. I mean, even you know, roofs
on cars used to be considered unmanly, right, you know,
a real man is not allowed to complain about getting
wet in the rain when he's driving his car. So
the first cars for women that were first created with
(12:17):
the roof. So I think there are these things and
wheels on suitcases is one example of this. When you
mentioned wheels right at the start, and you said, absolutely correctly,
you know, it's not just a wheel. You need other
things to go with wheels. You need axles, and you
need rows. Was it not the case that part of
the reason the innovation of the wheel suitcase was comparatively slow,
(12:37):
we didn't have the architecture because airports at that time,
before the nineteen seventies or right about that, were small
and they didn't have smooth surfaces. I mean, presumably as
airports expanded and got bigger and bigger, suddenly there is
a need for wheeled suitcases that wasn't there before. Definitely,
I mean that's a very good point. Of course, this
product happened when air travel started happening to a larger extent.
(12:59):
But it wasn't just that. If you look in newspaper
archives from the sixties and the fifties, there is like
a lot of complaining about how tricky it is to
carry suitcases. There are no porters anymore. The luggage industry
needs to innovate. We need handles made in softer fabrics.
I mean, it's all there because travel was already changing
(13:22):
and you did have buses, you have trained, so yes,
you know, the way we think of rolling suitcases against
these sort of smooth airport flaws, that was not an option.
But it's still heavy and people were certainly complaining about this,
you know, changing trains in Madrid and dragging your suitcases.
So it was a problem that people were aware of,
(13:42):
and actually it was unthinkable for the luggage industry that
men would adopt this particular solution to it, but then
they did. Yeah, but that's the other thing, I mean,
the speed of it. I mean, we all have them.
I don't remember ever there being a case where there
was a sort of backlash against wheelsuitcases because they were
deemed to be UNMATCHO. It's just there. It seemed to
happen very very quickly. There were no wheelsuitcases, and suddenly
(14:04):
there were wheelsuitcases, and everything seems to kind of evolve
in step with so, like you say, Porter's kind of vanished,
airport flaws got smoother and uncarpeted in order to do that,
And so there were all those different things happening in
synchronicity together at the same time. Because it did seem
to happen pretty rapidly after eighty seven, certainly, But I
(14:25):
mean you do have, like, first this sort of idea
that men can't roll suitcases need to disappear, and then women,
I mean, will you also have during this period, which
obviously I emphasize in the book, is that you know,
women come out onto the former labor market in greater numbers.
Women change business travel during the nineteen eighties in large
parts of the world. And that's not just you know,
(14:46):
suitcases with wheels. Women were the early adopters. It was
marketed to them. Obviously, a woman on a business trip
is a woman who travels by herself, right, not with
her family, So it was a product for her. And
women change business travel in you know, even like better
lighting in hotel bathrooms. And I mean a lot of
things changed because women started traveling like that as well,
(15:08):
and the rolling suit case was one of them. But
you know, you're right, I mean, how quickly then goes
from something that's unthinkable for men to have to being
I think now most people would think of it as
more of a mail product if you forced them to pick,
because it's so associated with like a suited businessman, right,
I guess so, And I think Robert Platt, the guy
(15:28):
who were talking about earlier, who invented to carry on
bagg as we know it with a telescopic handle and
that sort of two wheels. I think he was a pilot.
I think it was that right. Yeah, he started marketing
two sort of airline crews, and then you know, they
were quite good marketing because they would sort of walk
from the airport looking smart with these bags, and people
started thinking, oh, I want one. I wonder if it's possible.
(15:49):
Can you even buy a suitcase without wheels? Now? I
think it must be thing. Yeah, it must be tricky.
You know, it's completely disrupted the whole global luggage industry.
And you know that's what we think of when we
hear the word suitcase. Now, so yeah, there you go. Actually,
many years ago I did a program about wheel suitcases
and someone had invented I can't remember them in the company,
but they'd invented to sort of motorized wheelsuit case, which
(16:10):
was very fancy that I don't think that called on
just a bit too much fat Well, you don't know,
I mean it might, yeah, I've seen something like that. Look,
those robot ones they are supposed to walk behind you, right, Yeah,
and actually for kids as well, you know kids, the
idea that actually, well why don't we have a wheel
suitcase that kids can sit on and turn it into
a kind of fairground, right, Yes, so they're brilliant. Let's
(16:30):
just a win win. It's a win win. Let me
just ask you as well. I mean, you talked about
lighting in bathrooms and stuff, and your book you'd mentioned
lots of different things. I suppose words of gender has
sort of influenced innovation or where gender has held back innovation.
I'm just wondering what other examples you had where that's
the case. Yeah, I mean, so we mentioned cars, So
I mean that's quite interesting because it's such a ideas
(16:53):
of cars and car market is a very gendered thing
for different reasons. And where I talk about in the
book is electric cars, who were around already at the
dawn of the automobile era and the in the late
eighteen hundreds you could phone up an electric taxi company
and in and they would come pick you up. And
what's interesting is how electric cars started to be marketed
(17:15):
towards women because there was this idea that a car
that was slower, more comfortable, safer was feminine, So it
began to be marketed towards wealthy women and wasn't even
seen as almost like a like a car, more like
a drawing room on wheel, some kind of extension of
the feminine sphere of the home. See that's what I
(17:36):
want in a car. I want a drawing room on wheels,
you know, with sort of drapery and in build crystal
vases for flowers they had, Do you want that? Nice?
Very civilized? Well, actually that's interesting because people again a
bit like wheel suitcases. People like you say, site electric cars.
We've had them for ages. And again, you know, I
tend to think, well, isn't it just because battery technology
is a bit rubbish? Yes, that was the main reason
(17:58):
why electric cars then disappeared and we built a whole
world for petrol driven cars. So gender wasn't the main reason.
I don't say that in the book, but ultimately historians
they talk about battery issues. There were a couple of
big investments into sort of business models around electric car
technology in the US that didn't work out for other reasons,
(18:18):
so the market lost appetite. But then they also talk
about other cultural factors, and what I say in the
book is you know, you should call those other cultural
factors what they are, which is gender bias, because when
something becomes seen as for women or a drawing room
on wheels, then many male consumers don't want it. So
the electric car industry held back the size of its
(18:40):
own market. It's probably fair to say, though, that when
you talk about the sort of gender bias in terms
of innovation to a lot of people, it's just going
to seem invisible. They're going to be like, well, what
do you mean, because we're so used to the way
things are. It's only when it's pointed out you start
to make connections and see these gender biases everywhere. Is
that fair? Yeah? I think we tend to think of
(19:01):
the forces of innovation and technology as these sort of neutral,
incredibly powerful, rational things that are just sort of pushing everything.
You know, the economy, US society, our lives so long,
and that's not really how it works. You know, we
are the ones inventing and building machines and funding machines
and buying machines and not just machines but products, and
(19:23):
we come into all of these activities shaped by our biases,
and I think gender is a really big one. Here.
The trouble is of biases. They're really easy to see
in other people and not very easy to see in
yourself pointing out your biases as well. I'm not biased,
of course, I'm not bias. I'm absolutely rational and completely
open minded and down the middle, and I'm absolutely perfect,
which in my case is true. But everyone else I've
(19:44):
noticed is very, very biased, very biased. Well, I suppose
that's going to be true. I suppose when we think
about history of inventions, particularly I don't know, the Victorians,
our minds turn to steam engines and such. It does
tend to be a very male dominated world, not for
the fact that men are more creative, but just the
way that society and institutions were set up. Yeah, not
(20:05):
just that, I mean, I think I would go further.
I would say that sort of our definition technology has
almost always followed up a definition of masculinity or what
men do. Sort, when men do something, it's it's an invention,
you know, when women invent in software, which is you know,
that's what the whole economy is run on. Now, it's
a female invention. But back then it wasn't considered to
(20:26):
be technology. Men were doing hardware, which was like the
serious stuff, and women just happen to invent and develop
and largely develop this thing called software, and women are
written out a lot from the history of innovations, you know,
the historians who talk about you know, why do we
talk about the Bronze Age and the Iron age and
not the ceramic age or the flax age. You know,
(20:48):
ceramics or things that have to do with cloth. That's
also technology. That's also innovation, but we don't think of
it like that. And it's been largely developed and invented
by women. So women get written out of this history
of innovation, and when we study it, then we are
basically studying our own absence, which doesn't make women feel that,
(21:08):
you know, being an innovator is something, it's an identity
that's available to them. Yeah, it's not good. No, it's
an interesting Well, actually, we did a program about the
history of the space suits and I'll see Dover, which
was a division of PLATEX of course, used to make
brows and girdles, and actually the space suits that the
Apollo astronauts wore on the moon. Of course, we're all
handstitched by these fantastic women. These seamstresses from Delaware who
(21:30):
were amazing, And it's one of those stories that kind
of got lost the annals of innovation and invention, the
fact that you know, these women who are constructing these
extraordinary I don't want to say outfits, because they're more
than outfits. There are sort of wearable spacecraft. And I
guess it's why has that happened? And is it changing?
Are our attitudes towards innovation and invention changing? Now? Do
you think are are we still in a very male world? Well?
(21:50):
I think if you just sort of do a simple
exercise of following the money. So I mean, I'm Swedish.
In Sweden, one percent of all venture capital goes to women.
In Britain it's the same, it's one percent, and you know,
and that's mainly white women. I think black British women
gets zero points zero two sentible venture capital. And obviously
(22:11):
there are other ways of funding new ideas and innovations
than venture capital, but venture capital is certainly very powerful
and men do have a monopoly on this type of funding,
which means that that's not just a problem for today,
that's a problem for the next twenty twenty five years,
because it means that you know, the big innovations, the
big business models that will define large sectors of the
(22:33):
economy are all being developed by men with women absent.
So it's still a problem. I want to sort of
end on a little bit more about wheel suitcases that
they sort of reached their zenith. It defines zenith. Well,
is it like we've reached the pinnacle of that's it
for wheelsuitcase? There are no more innovations for wheel suitcases.
That's it. Well, that would be like famous last words, right,
(22:54):
I mean, but the history of innovation tells us that
there's always something coming. Well, I think there's become this
kind of standardized size of wheelsuitcases. It's that you know,
when you go into an airport and you've got your
wheelsuitcase and they've got like a measuring thing and it's
got to fit in there. Presumably as well as gender,
economics must have something to do with suitcase size, because
you know you're carrying on lugge. It has to be
this size in order to fit in the stow way,
(23:15):
and the bigger it is, the fewer seats you can sell.
Therefore they want them to be as small as possible. Yeah, no, absolutely,
it feels that they've figured out the ultimate size and
we've adapted to that. I mean, I think is this
the end? I'm sure there be some kind of development,
and travel will certainly change things, so I don't dare
to say this is it, but I do think it's
(23:36):
worth having this in mind when you see a rolling suitcase,
to just think of this sort of very gendered resistance
against the product that was there for so long and
now we take it for granted. And if if anything,
I think it's a reminder of how, you know, incredibly
serious we take our ideas of gender. You know, oh,
(23:56):
a man cannot roll a suitcase. Obviously, this product is
completely ridiculous, no man will ever buy it, and then
you know, two decades later it is something that every
business man has and nobody thinks of it. So it's
also I think a story of how gender roles can
change very quickly, and obviously how they can hold innovation
(24:18):
back and often do. Brilliant Kaden, thank you so much
for coming. I will never look at my wheels. Actually
that's the thing that really annoys me about oil shoot crass.
First of all, the handles always break. They always get
to a point where they don't telescope enough, and I
find myself having to lean over. Yeah, and at some
point the wheel always they get stuff caught in them
and they break, and I find them quite frustrating. It's annoying.
(24:39):
Then be a real man carry instead. Maybe I'll yeah,
maybe I'll go back in time. Maybe I'll become a
macho person, have a really heavy leather suitcase. Yeah. Well,
actually doing what others have my own port they'll just
carry for me. That is always a solution. Hire, it'd
be much more civilized. Thank you very much, Thank you,
(25:02):
thank you very much for joining us today. I hope
you enjoyed the episode. By the way, if there's an
invention story that you'd like to know more about, you've
got a favorite invention story you'd like me to cover
on the podcast, do get in touch. You can find
me at Dallas Campbell on Twitter, or stop me in
the street if you see me wandering about. I am
back every Wednesday and Sunday with brand new episodes, So
(25:22):
make sure that you subscribe to the series. Make sure
you leave us a nice review if you've been enjoying it.
Coming up next, we have an episode all about how
the smallest objects can make the biggest difference. I'll see
you then. That was an episode of Patented, The History
(25:43):
of Inventions. They've done podcasts on everything from condoms to
steam trains. Patented is from our friends over at History
Hit and it is available wherever
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