The History of (some) inventions

[matticus]

I found this a really interesting discussion.
View: https://twitter.com/dioscuri/status/1795418283887243277


For those of you with more narrow interests than me, scroll to the bits about bicycles ;-)

 

[Dave7]

I found this a really interesting discussion.
View: https://twitter.com/dioscuri/status/1795418283887243277


For those of you with more narrow interests than me, scroll to the bits about bicycles ;-)

I was honestly thinking the same thing about luggage wheels. Last night I was watching a travel prog and all bags had wheels..... I thought "why did we not have them years ago instead of pulling our arms out of their sockets"

 

[Chris S]

I was honestly thinking the same thing about luggage wheels. Last night I was watching a travel prog and all bags had wheels..... I thought "why did we not have them years ago instead of pulling our arms out of their sockets"

Only better off people used to travel and they would pay to have their luggage carried.

 

[Beebo]

Only better off people used to travel and they would pay to have their luggage carried.

That may have some truth to it. After all Station porters always had a trolley for carrying passengers luggage. I also suspect the technology to make the wheels small enough and robust enough was tricky to design.

In the early 90s I had a 3 week tour around Canada. The bloody handle fell of my rubbish old suitcase just as I got to the airport. So had to carry my case for 3 weeks without a handle. Wheels would have been a godsend.

 

[Moon bunny]

The first wheeled suitcase was used in the late 1920s, but men were too butch to be seen using one and the fairer sex preferred to let their menfolk or the porters carry their luggage. The first to take off came in the seventies as mass air travel came into its own with the arrival of Jumbo jets.

 

[matticus]

My favourite reason cited on that thread is the wheelchair laws requiring ramps etc everywhere.
But I think all of these factors combined together:
- cheaper flights meant more people travelling;
- less of those people could afford porters
- more women flew on their own
- more passengers meant bigger airports, so further to walk with your luggage
- changes in luggage check-in arrangements (I didn't know you could do it at your hotel in The Old Days!)

THAT's what's often interesting about these things, the weird accidents of history!

 

[Dogtrousers]

My grandad used to carry his luggage on his head, market porter style, whenever he had cause to travel (so my mum told me, she found it a bit embarrassing). He wasn't a market porter, he was a bus driver, but obviously such skills were more widespread back then.

So I'll add to @matticus' list:
- decline in market porter skills

 

[matticus]

My grandad used to carry his luggage on his head

TIP: this is a lot easier if you stuff all your clothes into a massive, flat-bottomed vase.

(or get your haircut to provide a stable socket)

 

[Ming the Merciless]

That Velcro has been around 70-80 years

 

[Ming the Merciless]

That glue was invented 200,000 years ago.