I can only buy what I can carry

I came in for flour and eggs. I'm leaving with flour. — Housewife, 1934

Sylvan Goldman ran grocery stores in Oklahoma City, and he noticed people quit shopping when their arms got full. Smart man. So he put wheels and two baskets on a folding chair. Nobody would push it. The women said they'd pushed enough baby carriages, and the men thought it made them look soft. Goldman had to hire people to push carts around the store and pretend to shop before anybody else would try one. That's how most good ideas go. Somebody has to look foolish first.

Still bugs us: the wheel. You know the one.

The full file

Goldman's first cart, built with the help of an employee named Fred Young, was a folding metal frame holding two baskets. Its drawback was room: a store's worth of them took up a lot of floor.

In September 1946 a Kansas City inventor, Orla Watson, filed a patent for a cart with a back gate that swung open, so one cart could roll into the back of the next. A whole line of them took a fraction of the floor.

In October 1947 Goldman's company brought out a nesting cart of its own that looked a great deal like Watson's, and Goldman filed a patent for it. The two men argued it out until 1949. Watson got the patent. Goldman got a license to make the carts and paid Watson royalties for the privilege.

Folding carts gave way to nesting ones, and the nesting kind is still the one lined up at the front of the store. Goldman is remembered as the inventor of the shopping cart. The one you pushed last week is Watson's.