Sometime in the 1990s, the sound of travel began to change. Previous changes came with well-known inventions: when a whining steam engine replaced a groaning cartwheel (or flapping sail); the whirring propeller deflected. But this new change is more democratic and widespread. It can be heard everywhere – in every seedy alley and where travelers usually gather: at train stations, in hotel lobbies, at airports. I hear it on the street near our house most of the day and night, but maybe especially early in the morning when people go on long journeys. “Braddle, delirium, delirium, delirium, delirium, delirium,” was how the Impressionist children described it. If we had heard this sound 30 years ago, we might have imagined an inline skater getting up at dawn to practice. Now it could be anyone: a lawyer with wigs and legal papers, a family traveling with luggage for two weeks in the Algarve. Light or heavy, large or small, another suitcase clatters through a crack in the sidewalk on its way to the bus stop or subway.
What was life like before suitcases had wheels? Like many people of his generation, my dad wore our cardboard boxes on his left shoulder. He was as agile as a sailor, as if a heavy chest could weigh no more than a parrot, although that meant that in order to enjoy a conversation, one always had to walk to his right; before he could answer the unexpected salute from the left, he turned in that direction slowly and deliberately, like a blindfolded horse. I never mastered the technique of carrying it on my shoulder and thought to myself that if suitcases have handles, then they can be used, although the real reason may be that I am not strong enough. My father can walk long distances with luggage on his back. One Sunday morning, when my brother was returning to the RAF from family leave, I remember driving him two miles up the hills to the station when no other transport was available; my father carried his son’s duffel bag on his shoulders. it was similar to the backpack that the choir sang about in the song “Jolly Wanderer”, which was a top ten hit at the time.
Others prefer other techniques. Street photos show children in pushchairs filling holiday suitcases, while lighter pushchairs rest in their mothers’ arms. I suspect that my parents considered this behavior to be “common,” perhaps because families fleeing rent arrears sometimes behave in this way (“Moonlight”). Of course, money is everything. Even if you have a small amount, you can hail taxis and porters or get your suitcases to the front by train – at least until the 1970s, still available to Clyde coast holidaymakers and Oxford students in the 1960s. Such convenience. It seems to be the work of Waugh or Wodehouse, but I remember a school friend being told by his socially ambitious mother, “Give the porter a shilling and let him put you and your boxes on a train in North Berwick.” the existence of the wheelless suitcase depends on a meagerly paid class of servants, and these red-shirted coolies can still be seen on Indian railway platforms skillfully stacking your luggage on their heads. see it again.
But it seems that wheels introduce not labor costs, but the large flat distances of airports. More research is needed; in the history of everyday objects, bags are still not at the level of scholarship that Henry Petroski did for pencils or Radcliffe Salaman for potatoes Academic level, and, like almost every invention, more than one person can plausibly claim to be commendable. Wheeled devices that attach to suitcases appeared in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until 1970 that Bernard D. Sadow, vice president of a luggage manufacturing company in Massachusetts, had an epiphany. Carrying two heavy suitcases on his back after a vacation in the Caribbean, he noticed at customs how an airport worker moved heavy equipment on a wheeled pallet with almost no effort. According to a New York Times report by Joe Sharkley 40 years later, Sadow told his wife, “You know, this is the suitcase we need,” and when he got back to work, he pulled roller skates out of the trunk of a closet. and installed them in a large suitcase with a drawstring in front.
It works – well, why not? – Two years later, Sadow’s innovation was registered as U.S. Patent #3,653,474: “Rolling Baggage”, which claimed that air travel was his inspiration. “Luggage used to be handled by porters and loaded and unloaded at street-friendly locations, whereas today’s large terminals … exacerbate the complexity of baggage handling, [which] can be the biggest problem for airline passengers.” , wheeled suitcases are slow to catch on. Men especially resisted the convenience of wheeled suitcases—“a very masculine thing,” Sadow recalls in The New York Times—and the fact that his suitcase was rather bulky and was a horizontally braked quad. Like Logie Baird’s TV, it was quickly supplanted by advanced technology, in this case the two-wheeled Rollaboard built by Northwest Airlines pilot and DIY enthusiast Robert Plath in 1987. Designed in 1999, he sold his early models to crew members. Roll boards have telescopic handles and can be rolled vertically with minimal tilt. The sight of flight attendants leading them around the airport made Plath’s invention a suitcase for professionals. More and more women are traveling alone. The fate of the wheelless suitcase is decided.
This month, I traveled around Europe on a four-wheeled version of an old Rollaboard, a version I was late with because two wheels seemed sinful enough in a masculine world of old luggage. But: two wheels is good, four wheels is better. We got there by winding turns – 10 trains, two lake steamers, subways, three hotels – although I understand it’s hard for me to get anywhere with Patrick Leigh Fermor or Norman Lewis is on the same level, but it seems like an achievement none of these transfers will require a taxi. Full public transport. We moved easily between trains, ships and hotels; on good, flat roads, the four-wheelers seemed to generate their own power when the going got harder—for example, in the Tour de France, known as the Pave—it’s easy to get back on two wheels. and continue down the slope.
Maybe carrying suitcases isn’t exactly a good thing. This encouraged people to carry more than they needed—more than they could carry in the days without wheels—in suitcases the size of sea barrels that cluttered the van’s front lobby and bus aisle. But apart from cheap flights, no other modern developments have made travel easier. We owe it to Sadow and Plath, durable plastic wheels and feminism.
Post time: May-10-2023
