During the Great Depression in the 1930s, most Americans were just trying to get by, and few had the luxury of coming home from the grocery store with extra items. But that didn’t stop an Oklahoma grocer from coming up with the idea of a shopping cart, an invention that started out almost as disdained as it was practical.

The man behind the idea was Sylvan N. Goldman, owner of the Humpty Dumpty grocery chain. Interested in increasing his sales, he often paid close attention to how people shopped. One thing stood out: Customers would stop shopping once their handheld baskets got too heavy. Goldman started thinking: What if there were a way for shoppers to carry more with less effort? As an experiment, he took a folding chair, added wheels to the legs, and placed a basket on the seat. He then attached a platform between the chair’s supports to hold a second basket, creating a two-tiered cart that shoppers could push.

When he rolled out these new grocery carts in 1937, he expected a runaway hit, but the reaction wasn’t exactly enthusiastic. Women, already used to pushing strollers, weren’t eager to push another one at the store. Men, on the other hand, preferred not to push something stroller-like at all, they felt it was too feminine. To get people on board, Goldman got creative. He hired store greeters to hand shoppers a cart, and even paid female and male actors/models to walk around shopping with them. Slowly, the idea caught on, and once it did, there was no going back.

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‘why do I always choose the shopping cart with the squeaky wheel?

it is my bad luck, or are all the carts dysfunctional?’

-rachel nichols

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source credits: history facts, npr, mallory yu