50 years ago, four small wheels revolutionized traveling with luggage. In 1972 the American Bernard Sadow invented the trolley case. But it had its pitfalls in the beginning and was not very popular.
Bernard Sadow returned with his family from a holiday on the Caribbean Island of Aruba. Sadow was vice president of a Massachusetts suitcase and coat manufacturer.
While transferring at the Puerto Rico airport, he was struggling with his own overweight luggage when he saw a customs agent moving a heavy machine with a sled on wheels. In a 2010 interview with the New York Times, Sadow said he said to his wife that we need that for the suitcases.
Initially little interest in trolley cases. It was an invention whose essential ingredients had existed for thousands of years: the wheel and luggage. “I find it funny that inventions that seem simple and obvious somehow take a long time,” said Nobel Prize winner and economist Robert Shiller at a lecture at Yale University. The suitcase even made it into one of his books – as an example of how the potential of a seemingly ground-breaking idea often only becomes apparent after the fact. And when we think of it, nobody wants it. Sadow was initially rebuffed with his trolley case at the US department store group Macy’s, says Shiller. “Nobody buys that. It looks silly, wheels on the suitcase. Anyone who needs help with their luggage will find a porter at every train station and in every hotel. You don’t need a suitcase on a trolley,” says Shiller about the reservations about the invention at the time been a macho thing, Sadow, who died in 2011, once said. But with an increasing number of air travel, most passengers had to take care of their luggage themselves. Eventually Macy’s bought a few copies. In 1972 Sadow received his US patent for the first trolley case.
Sadow took a large suitcase and attached four small rollers to the bottom. And then there was a leather strap to pull however the suitcase fell to the side. 15 years later a 747 pilot Robert Plath from Northwest Airlines come up with the crucial idea of pulling the suitcase behind him upright on just two wheels with an extendable handle. He called it a rollaboard. And at first, he only sold them to other pilots.
Many trolley suitcases now have four wheels again and can be pushed upright. There are suitcases that children can sit on while they are being pulled, suitcases as scooters for endless terminals and – yes, of course – even self-propelled luggage that follows you. Hopefully. The name Bernard Sadow is not well known in the US either. Maybe because everyone is a little embarrassed that it hasn’t occurred to them for so long.