In the program "Historically yours" on Europe 1 this Monday, the journalist David Castello-Lopes returns to the origin of the suitcase on wheels, marketed from the 1970s, but which took some time to become more democratic.

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Historically yours

, David Castello-Lopes looks back on the origins of an object or a concept.

This Monday, he looks at the suitcase on wheels, which has made it easier for generations of travelers to travel.

But for a long time, manufacturers first saw it as a feminine accessory, convinced that men would refuse to push their luggage rather than carry it.

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"If you were born in the 1980s, you are part of the last generation to have known the analog world, the one where you wrote letters because it was the only way to send written things to someone. , the one where we displayed road maps the size of a poster in the car to find our way, the one where we could still hear this sentence, disappeared for some time: 'I have to go home because I'm waiting for a phone call. '

But there was also a more discreet revolution, that of the suitcase.

For a long time, the suitcase was heavy, difficult to transport and, above all, without wheels.

Today's suitcases are incredibly more efficient and practical than they used to be, almost all with a telescopic handle and two or four wheels.

The idea of ​​putting wheels on a piece of luggage is not new.

Thus, many controversies agitate the small world of the suitcase to know who was the first.

But the first to have had some commercial success was invented by Bernard Sadow in 1970.

It is in the Puerto Rico airport that he sees an employee moving a very heavy object on a trolley and imagines doing the same thing with his suitcase.

But Bernard Sadow had a hard time selling his invention to American department stores, because he was told that a man would never agree to roll his suitcase rather than carry it manly.

An accessory for a female clientele

And besides, in the first advertisements for suitcases on wheels, it is overwhelmingly women who are represented.

And even in the 2004 commercial for the Samsonite Sahora Spinner, which is considered by many to be the first modern suitcase thanks to its four wheels, she's still a woman who is seen crossing the world with an air of professional urgency. , almost seeming to exclaim: 'please push yourself, I'm beautiful, I don't have time'.

Sadow's invention therefore ended up being a great success, largely favored by the fact that from the 1970s, the airplane gradually replaced the train as a modern means of transport.

Airports are getting bigger and you have to carry your suitcase over ever greater distances.

At that time, we still drag our suitcase lengthwise, with a kind of soft lead.

The modern rolling suitcase, with a telescopic handle and two wheels, dates from 1987. It was invented by an airline pilot, Robert Plath, who first sold his invention to fellow pilots, flight attendants and flight attendants. air.

And by dint of seeing them pass and repass in the corridors of airports with their new suitcases, travelers have ended up, too, by being convinced. "