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From Patented: Inventing the Wheeled Suitcase · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, it's Jacob Goldstein and I've got a bonus
0:20
Speaker 1: episode for you today. It is about the surprisingly intriguing
0:24
Speaker 1: story of the invention of the wheeled suitcase. It's from
0:28
Speaker 1: the podcast Patented History of Inventions. I really enjoyed it,
0:32
Speaker 1: and I hope you like it too, So it's kind
0:34
Speaker 1: of like an example of how stupid we are sometimes
0:37
Speaker 1: when it comes to innovation, that we managed to put
0:39
Speaker 1: two men on the moon before we put wheels on suitcases.
0:50
Speaker 1: Sometimes a product comes along and you can't help but think,
0:55
Speaker 1: how did it take so long for someone to come
0:57
Speaker 1: up with that? A prime example, it wasn't until nineteen
1:00
Speaker 1: seventy two that Bernard D. Sado patented the first wheel suitcase.
1:05
Speaker 1: And this is centuries, of course after the invention of
1:07
Speaker 1: the wheel deck aid, since luggage had become an everyday item,
1:12
Speaker 1: it just seems so obvious. The story of the rolling
1:15
Speaker 1: suitcase has become somewhat of a favorite anecdote for people
1:19
Speaker 1: like me to wheel out when trying to inject some
1:22
Speaker 1: hoobrist into conversations about invention and innovation. Sometimes the most
1:26
Speaker 1: obvious ideas simply elude us. And whilst this is a
1:30
Speaker 1: good lesson for us all. I also think that this
1:32
Speaker 1: framing misses some key context. Yes, the technology existed, but
1:38
Speaker 1: the need for easily movable luggage didn't exist much before
1:42
Speaker 1: the disappearance of porters from our trained stations and the
1:46
Speaker 1: dawn of an age of affordable mass tourism. Aren't those
1:50
Speaker 1: giant airports with their smooth flows just calling out for wheels?
1:55
Speaker 1: But today's guest, Katrine Marsal, author of the book Mothers
1:59
Speaker 1: of Invention, suggests that there's an even bigger gap in
2:02
Speaker 1: this story. Her research suggests there were social blind spots
2:06
Speaker 1: that prevented us from widely adopting wheeled luggage, something that
2:09
Speaker 1: she discovered existed long before its official invention date back
2:13
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. I'm Dallas Campbell and this is
2:17
Speaker 1: patented History of Inventions, a podcast from History Hits. Welcome
2:42
Speaker 1: to the show, Katrine Musselle. Love you to have you here.
2:45
Speaker 1: Katrine of course, writer, speaker, economist, well, writer about economics,
2:51
Speaker 1: and author of the book Mothers of Invention. How good
2:54
Speaker 1: ideas get ignored in an economy bill for men? That's me, Yes,
2:59
Speaker 1: thank you, that is you, that is you. Well listen,
3:00
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on. I've been really looking forward to
3:02
Speaker 1: this one because the story of the wheel suitcase, it's
3:06
Speaker 1: kind of one of those stories that always gets trotted
3:08
Speaker 1: out when anyone's talking innovation. Everyone's like, well, wheel suitcases,
3:11
Speaker 1: And we've had wheels for a billion years, and we've
3:14
Speaker 1: had suitcases for a billion years, And why did no
3:16
Speaker 1: one put wheels on a suitcase before nineteen seventy Well
3:19
Speaker 1: not exactly a billion years, but well, not exactly a
3:22
Speaker 1: billion years, but around about a billion years. So why
3:25
Speaker 1: don't we just talk about the kind of received story,
3:27
Speaker 1: the one that everyone trots out, and then we can
3:29
Speaker 1: drill down a little bit deeper into actually what's really
3:33
Speaker 1: going on behind this? Okay, sure, Well, so we've had
3:37
Speaker 1: wheels for five thousand years. Yeah, that's what I meant.
3:42
Speaker 1: I was exaggerating for effect. We've had wheels for five
3:46
Speaker 1: thousand years, and it's one of these you know, we
3:48
Speaker 1: think of it as, you know, the big invention that
3:51
Speaker 1: changed everything, kind of did I guess. I mean, they're
3:54
Speaker 1: pretty useful. Wheels did, but it took longer than you think, right,
3:57
Speaker 1: you know, you think that you know, we have this
3:59
Speaker 1: sort of cartoon idea of it that somebody just sort of, oh,
4:03
Speaker 1: let's have wheels, and then sort of everything had wheels immediately,
4:06
Speaker 1: and everybody realized and that's not really our innovation works.
4:10
Speaker 1: You know, you need to have a lot of other
4:11
Speaker 1: things for wheels to work, like roads and roads are helpful,
4:15
Speaker 1: Roads are helpful, Somebody like some kind of system for
4:18
Speaker 1: maintaining roads, axles, you know, there's there's a lot of
4:21
Speaker 1: things actually, But leaving that aside, the story of the
4:25
Speaker 1: wheel suitcase, the way it's normally told is that we've
4:28
Speaker 1: had wheels for five thousand years. We've applied this technology
4:31
Speaker 1: of the wheel to a lot of other things, you know,
4:34
Speaker 1: cars and bicycles and ferries wheels and hamster wheels, but
4:38
Speaker 1: not the suitcase. So we didn't get wheels on suitcases
4:42
Speaker 1: until nineteen seventy two. And that's how we normally tell
4:45
Speaker 1: this story. So it's kind of like an example of
4:48
Speaker 1: how stupid we are sometimes when it comes to innovation,
4:50
Speaker 1: that we managed to put two men on the moon
4:53
Speaker 1: before we put wheels on suitcases. And so the nineteen
4:56
Speaker 1: seventy two that was the pattern. So I think it
4:58
Speaker 1: was a couple of years before, wasn't I can't remember
5:00
Speaker 1: the guys that Bernard. Bernard say, yeah, that's idea. Seventy
5:03
Speaker 1: two is when it's approved. So it's the first commercially
5:06
Speaker 1: successful pattern here. And just tell our listeners how did
5:10
Speaker 1: that pattern happen? What was his story, what was his background. Well,
5:13
Speaker 1: so he was an American executive in the luggage industry,
5:17
Speaker 1: so somebody paid to think about her to make suitcases better, right, Yeah,
5:23
Speaker 1: And he was coming back from holiday with his family.
5:28
Speaker 1: This is a few years before, so the end of
5:29
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, and he is dragging these suitcases through
5:33
Speaker 1: customs and he looks up and he sees somebody who's
5:37
Speaker 1: probably working there sort of pulling something heavy on a
5:40
Speaker 1: platform with wheels. And he looks up at, you know,
5:44
Speaker 1: at this thing, and he looks at his own sort
5:46
Speaker 1: of suitcase, and he looks up at his wife and
5:48
Speaker 1: he says, that's what suitcases need, wheels, And the clouds
5:53
Speaker 1: parted and the sun and a choir of angels started
5:57
Speaker 1: singing Hallelujah at least right. But he then went back
6:00
Speaker 1: to Massachusetts and he screwed off these sort of cast
6:04
Speaker 1: of wheels from a I think it was a wardrobe,
6:06
Speaker 1: and he attached them to a suitcase that's right. Yeah, yeah,
6:09
Speaker 1: and that was so we always think, yeah, wheel suitcase
6:11
Speaker 1: invented in nineteen seventy, but that's um. It was kind
6:14
Speaker 1: of the wheels on the suitcase were on the four
6:17
Speaker 1: corners of the suitcase, and there was like a handle
6:19
Speaker 1: like a kind of yeah, like a leish, exactly like
6:22
Speaker 1: a leish. And then there was another innovation sometime later
6:25
Speaker 1: when you've got the telescopic handle and the suitcase was
6:28
Speaker 1: sort of flipped up on its end and you had
6:30
Speaker 1: the two wheels and low and behold that carry on
6:33
Speaker 1: wheelie suitcase as we know it was born. And I
6:35
Speaker 1: can't remember when that one was. That was in nineteen
6:37
Speaker 1: eighty seven, so almost a billion years after almost because
6:41
Speaker 1: you think, really, I mean, it's not such a huge
6:43
Speaker 1: thing because those first suitcases that Bernard say, don't bless him,
6:47
Speaker 1: you know, invented, they were not that great because they
6:50
Speaker 1: kept sort of falling over, and you could even buy
6:52
Speaker 1: a kind of stabilizers. You could get stabilizers for your suitcase.
6:56
Speaker 1: That's right. I used to have one. I remember I
6:57
Speaker 1: used to have a really hard green suitcase that had
6:59
Speaker 1: four wheels and a leash and it was rubbish. How
7:01
Speaker 1: old are you, I'm one hundred years billion years old. Actually, funnily,
7:06
Speaker 1: if I was born in nineteen seventy, the year of
7:09
Speaker 1: the wheelsuitcase, if you're Bernard Duda, So from nineteen seventy two,
7:14
Speaker 1: it takes until nineteen eighty seven until somebody figures out, well, actually,
7:17
Speaker 1: let's just turn this thing around and it won't tip over.
7:20
Speaker 1: And that was Robert Platt. So he created what we
7:23
Speaker 1: now think of us a rolling suitcase. All right, So
7:26
Speaker 1: that's the kind of story, and it sort of was that.
7:28
Speaker 1: I mean, these people existed and things existed, but a
7:32
Speaker 1: little bit of research, a little bit of googling reveals
7:34
Speaker 1: that people have been designing wheeled suitcases forever. I mean
7:38
Speaker 1: I was looking back and there was one in nineteen
7:40
Speaker 1: twenty five, someone had a pattern for a wheelsuitcase. And
7:43
Speaker 1: so what's going on? Like why were all these sort
7:45
Speaker 1: of proto wheel suitcases not happening? Like why did they
7:48
Speaker 1: not exist? People had the idea? So why are we
7:50
Speaker 1: celebrating the invention in nineteen seventy you know, I mean
7:54
Speaker 1: that's what it's like with innovation, right, you know a
7:56
Speaker 1: lot of people tend to have a similar idea around
7:59
Speaker 1: the same time. And you know, in this case we
8:01
Speaker 1: count the first commercially successful pattern. So I mean, that
8:04
Speaker 1: is one thing, but your point is correct. Other people
8:08
Speaker 1: had thought of this before. What I find really interesting
8:11
Speaker 1: and which didn't take me that long when I was
8:14
Speaker 1: working on the book, was to see that there is
8:16
Speaker 1: a sort of very gender pattern to all of this.
8:19
Speaker 1: So there were quite a few niche products in different
8:25
Speaker 1: ways applying the technology of the wheel to the rolling suitcase.
8:29
Speaker 1: So it's anything from these sort of strap on things
8:31
Speaker 1: with wheels that you could put on your suitcase, two
8:34
Speaker 1: actual you know, luggage with wheels, and so many of
8:38
Speaker 1: these were actually niche products for women. Why was that
8:44
Speaker 1: because and this, you know, I argue in the book
8:47
Speaker 1: is the big reason actually the solution to this mystery.
8:50
Speaker 1: You know, why did it take us so long to
8:52
Speaker 1: put wheels on suitcases? There was this really strong idea
8:56
Speaker 1: that it's unmanly to roll a suitcase. And that's why,
9:00
Speaker 1: even though these ideas existed, and there were you know,
9:03
Speaker 1: reasonably successful niche products for women using the technology of
9:08
Speaker 1: the wheel to make rolling a suitcase easier, the luggage
9:11
Speaker 1: industry as a whole didn't think this was anything that
9:15
Speaker 1: would go anywhere. And even after Bernard Saide of invent
9:18
Speaker 1: this rolling suitcase, at first, no American department store wants
9:22
Speaker 1: to sell it because they think there's no market. Men
9:25
Speaker 1: will never roll a suitcase and women are too small
9:28
Speaker 1: of a market. That's really interesting. It's funny actually, because
9:31
Speaker 1: I've just got a picture here. I'm going to show
9:32
Speaker 1: it to It's on my phone, So that was I
9:34
Speaker 1: don't know if you can see on my camera. Yeah,
9:36
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that before. So this was nineteen twenty five,
9:39
Speaker 1: and the inventor is called s Mastrotonio. I've pronounced their
9:43
Speaker 1: mastaurant anyway. It's a woman in an elegant stripy dress
9:48
Speaker 1: pushing a wheeled suitcase, and that's a sort of nineteen
9:50
Speaker 1: twenty five. So I'm just wondering, yes, with this idea
9:52
Speaker 1: sort of designed for women because this is not what
9:55
Speaker 1: men do. Yeah, there is like a long story of
9:59
Speaker 1: us thinking that wheels around manly. Even in Arthurian poetry.
10:05
Speaker 1: I talk about this in the book. There's sort of
10:07
Speaker 1: an instance when when Lancer Lot has to get on
10:10
Speaker 1: a cart with wheels to find Guineava and he can't
10:14
Speaker 1: do this because a night has to be on a
10:16
Speaker 1: horse or at least standing on his own two legs.
10:19
Speaker 1: He can't be on something with wheels, really yeah, yeah,
10:22
Speaker 1: But like guys like cars, and this is before cars.
10:26
Speaker 1: This is before cars, right, and the Roman chariots and
10:29
Speaker 1: ben Hurd that's pretty ridiculous Roman chariot cars. There. It's
10:33
Speaker 1: not like a constant, but there are there are these
10:35
Speaker 1: ideas around and there was certainly a period when sort
10:38
Speaker 1: of going in a carriage was considered to be you know, feminine,
10:42
Speaker 1: and then going on horseback. So there are sort of
10:44
Speaker 1: strains of this. But actually when it comes to luggage,
10:47
Speaker 1: it's all about, you know, masculinity has to always be proven,
10:52
Speaker 1: and one way that a man has to prove that
10:54
Speaker 1: he's a man is by carrying heavy things. This is
10:57
Speaker 1: just a really kind of strong opinion that the luggage
11:00
Speaker 1: industry has, along with an opinion that they are selling
11:03
Speaker 1: luggage to men who are the ones who travel. Women
11:07
Speaker 1: don't travel alone. If a woman levels, she will travel
11:10
Speaker 1: with a man who will then have to carry her
11:12
Speaker 1: bag for her. So that woman that you show me
11:15
Speaker 1: on the picture, she's something that the industry considers to
11:18
Speaker 1: be quite rare, which is a woman who travels on
11:20
Speaker 1: her own. And even in the nineteen seventies, the first
11:23
Speaker 1: rolling suitcases work quite heavily marketed towards you know, like
11:27
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventies businesswoman in a corduvoice suit. And I suppose,
11:31
Speaker 1: you know, when we're talking about those gender stereotypes, I mean,
11:34
Speaker 1: is it that women push prams and push chairs and
11:37
Speaker 1: when we think about wheels, we tend to think or
11:39
Speaker 1: perhaps the industry would have tend to have thought of that. Yeah,
11:41
Speaker 1: and I suppose that a luggage on wheels maybe quite
11:44
Speaker 1: similar visually in a way. Yeah. And I think there's
11:47
Speaker 1: also something about that men are not sort of allowed
11:50
Speaker 1: to demand or want comfort in a way. You know,
11:54
Speaker 1: it's sort of the trend. I demand comfort at all opportunities,
11:58
Speaker 1: but it has to be like hard, right, it has
12:01
Speaker 1: to really. Yeah, Okay, you're the exception. But there's a
12:04
Speaker 1: lot of these things. I mean, even you know, roofs
12:06
Speaker 1: on cars used to be considered unmanly, right, you know,
12:09
Speaker 1: a real man is not allowed to complain about getting
12:12
Speaker 1: wet in the rain when he's driving his car. So
12:14
Speaker 1: the first cars for women that were first created with
12:17
Speaker 1: the roof. So I think there are these things and
12:20
Speaker 1: wheels on suitcases is one example of this. When you
12:23
Speaker 1: mentioned wheels right at the start, and you said, absolutely correctly,
12:25
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just a wheel. You need other
12:27
Speaker 1: things to go with wheels. You need axles, and you
12:29
Speaker 1: need rows. Was it not the case that part of
12:33
Speaker 1: the reason the innovation of the wheel suitcase was comparatively slow,
12:37
Speaker 1: we didn't have the architecture because airports at that time,
12:40
Speaker 1: before the nineteen seventies or right about that, were small
12:42
Speaker 1: and they didn't have smooth surfaces. I mean, presumably as
12:45
Speaker 1: airports expanded and got bigger and bigger, suddenly there is
12:47
Speaker 1: a need for wheeled suitcases that wasn't there before. Definitely,
12:52
Speaker 1: I mean that's a very good point. Of course, this
12:54
Speaker 1: product happened when air travel started happening to a larger extent.
12:59
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just that. If you look in newspaper
13:02
Speaker 1: archives from the sixties and the fifties, there is like
13:06
Speaker 1: a lot of complaining about how tricky it is to
13:09
Speaker 1: carry suitcases. There are no porters anymore. The luggage industry
13:13
Speaker 1: needs to innovate. We need handles made in softer fabrics.
13:18
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all there because travel was already changing
13:22
Speaker 1: and you did have buses, you have trained, so yes,
13:25
Speaker 1: you know, the way we think of rolling suitcases against
13:28
Speaker 1: these sort of smooth airport flaws, that was not an option.
13:32
Speaker 1: But it's still heavy and people were certainly complaining about this,
13:36
Speaker 1: you know, changing trains in Madrid and dragging your suitcases.
13:40
Speaker 1: So it was a problem that people were aware of,
13:42
Speaker 1: and actually it was unthinkable for the luggage industry that
13:46
Speaker 1: men would adopt this particular solution to it, but then
13:50
Speaker 1: they did. Yeah, but that's the other thing, I mean,
13:52
Speaker 1: the speed of it. I mean, we all have them.
13:54
Speaker 1: I don't remember ever there being a case where there
13:56
Speaker 1: was a sort of backlash against wheelsuitcases because they were
13:58
Speaker 1: deemed to be UNMATCHO. It's just there. It seemed to
14:02
Speaker 1: happen very very quickly. There were no wheelsuitcases, and suddenly
14:04
Speaker 1: there were wheelsuitcases, and everything seems to kind of evolve
14:08
Speaker 1: in step with so, like you say, Porter's kind of vanished,
14:12
Speaker 1: airport flaws got smoother and uncarpeted in order to do that,
14:17
Speaker 1: And so there were all those different things happening in
14:19
Speaker 1: synchronicity together at the same time. Because it did seem
14:21
Speaker 1: to happen pretty rapidly after eighty seven, certainly, But I
14:25
Speaker 1: mean you do have, like, first this sort of idea
14:27
Speaker 1: that men can't roll suitcases need to disappear, and then women,
14:31
Speaker 1: I mean, will you also have during this period, which
14:33
Speaker 1: obviously I emphasize in the book, is that you know,
14:36
Speaker 1: women come out onto the former labor market in greater numbers.
14:40
Speaker 1: Women change business travel during the nineteen eighties in large
14:43
Speaker 1: parts of the world. And that's not just you know,
14:46
Speaker 1: suitcases with wheels. Women were the early adopters. It was
14:49
Speaker 1: marketed to them. Obviously, a woman on a business trip
14:53
Speaker 1: is a woman who travels by herself, right, not with
14:55
Speaker 1: her family, So it was a product for her. And
14:58
Speaker 1: women change business travel in you know, even like better
15:01
Speaker 1: lighting in hotel bathrooms. And I mean a lot of
15:04
Speaker 1: things changed because women started traveling like that as well,
15:08
Speaker 1: and the rolling suit case was one of them. But
15:10
Speaker 1: you know, you're right, I mean, how quickly then goes
15:13
Speaker 1: from something that's unthinkable for men to have to being
15:16
Speaker 1: I think now most people would think of it as
15:18
Speaker 1: more of a mail product if you forced them to pick,
15:22
Speaker 1: because it's so associated with like a suited businessman, right,
15:26
Speaker 1: I guess so, And I think Robert Platt, the guy
15:28
Speaker 1: who were talking about earlier, who invented to carry on
15:30
Speaker 1: bagg as we know it with a telescopic handle and
15:32
Speaker 1: that sort of two wheels. I think he was a pilot.
15:34
Speaker 1: I think it was that right. Yeah, he started marketing
15:37
Speaker 1: two sort of airline crews, and then you know, they
15:40
Speaker 1: were quite good marketing because they would sort of walk
15:43
Speaker 1: from the airport looking smart with these bags, and people
15:46
Speaker 1: started thinking, oh, I want one. I wonder if it's possible.
15:49
Speaker 1: Can you even buy a suitcase without wheels? Now? I
15:51
Speaker 1: think it must be thing. Yeah, it must be tricky.
15:53
Speaker 1: You know, it's completely disrupted the whole global luggage industry.
15:57
Speaker 1: And you know that's what we think of when we
15:59
Speaker 1: hear the word suitcase. Now, so yeah, there you go. Actually,
16:02
Speaker 1: many years ago I did a program about wheel suitcases
16:04
Speaker 1: and someone had invented I can't remember them in the company,
16:07
Speaker 1: but they'd invented to sort of motorized wheelsuit case, which
16:10
Speaker 1: was very fancy that I don't think that called on
16:13
Speaker 1: just a bit too much fat Well, you don't know,
16:15
Speaker 1: I mean it might, yeah, I've seen something like that. Look,
16:18
Speaker 1: those robot ones they are supposed to walk behind you, right, Yeah,
16:22
Speaker 1: and actually for kids as well, you know kids, the
16:24
Speaker 1: idea that actually, well why don't we have a wheel
16:26
Speaker 1: suitcase that kids can sit on and turn it into
16:28
Speaker 1: a kind of fairground, right, Yes, so they're brilliant. Let's
16:30
Speaker 1: just a win win. It's a win win. Let me
16:32
Speaker 1: just ask you as well. I mean, you talked about
16:34
Speaker 1: lighting in bathrooms and stuff, and your book you'd mentioned
16:36
Speaker 1: lots of different things. I suppose words of gender has
16:40
Speaker 1: sort of influenced innovation or where gender has held back innovation.
16:44
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering what other examples you had where that's
16:47
Speaker 1: the case. Yeah, I mean, so we mentioned cars, So
16:49
Speaker 1: I mean that's quite interesting because it's such a ideas
16:53
Speaker 1: of cars and car market is a very gendered thing
16:56
Speaker 1: for different reasons. And where I talk about in the
16:59
Speaker 1: book is electric cars, who were around already at the
17:02
Speaker 1: dawn of the automobile era and the in the late
17:05
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds you could phone up an electric taxi company
17:09
Speaker 1: and in and they would come pick you up. And
17:11
Speaker 1: what's interesting is how electric cars started to be marketed
17:15
Speaker 1: towards women because there was this idea that a car
17:18
Speaker 1: that was slower, more comfortable, safer was feminine, So it
17:24
Speaker 1: began to be marketed towards wealthy women and wasn't even
17:28
Speaker 1: seen as almost like a like a car, more like
17:31
Speaker 1: a drawing room on wheel, some kind of extension of
17:34
Speaker 1: the feminine sphere of the home. See that's what I
17:36
Speaker 1: want in a car. I want a drawing room on wheels,
17:39
Speaker 1: you know, with sort of drapery and in build crystal
17:42
Speaker 1: vases for flowers they had, Do you want that? Nice?
17:45
Speaker 1: Very civilized? Well, actually that's interesting because people again a
17:48
Speaker 1: bit like wheel suitcases. People like you say, site electric cars.
17:52
Speaker 1: We've had them for ages. And again, you know, I
17:53
Speaker 1: tend to think, well, isn't it just because battery technology
17:56
Speaker 1: is a bit rubbish? Yes, that was the main reason
17:58
Speaker 1: why electric cars then disappeared and we built a whole
18:00
Speaker 1: world for petrol driven cars. So gender wasn't the main reason.
18:04
Speaker 1: I don't say that in the book, but ultimately historians
18:06
Speaker 1: they talk about battery issues. There were a couple of
18:09
Speaker 1: big investments into sort of business models around electric car
18:14
Speaker 1: technology in the US that didn't work out for other reasons,
18:18
Speaker 1: so the market lost appetite. But then they also talk
18:21
Speaker 1: about other cultural factors, and what I say in the
18:24
Speaker 1: book is you know, you should call those other cultural
18:27
Speaker 1: factors what they are, which is gender bias, because when
18:30
Speaker 1: something becomes seen as for women or a drawing room
18:34
Speaker 1: on wheels, then many male consumers don't want it. So
18:38
Speaker 1: the electric car industry held back the size of its
18:40
Speaker 1: own market. It's probably fair to say, though, that when
18:43
Speaker 1: you talk about the sort of gender bias in terms
18:45
Speaker 1: of innovation to a lot of people, it's just going
18:47
Speaker 1: to seem invisible. They're going to be like, well, what
18:48
Speaker 1: do you mean, because we're so used to the way
18:50
Speaker 1: things are. It's only when it's pointed out you start
18:54
Speaker 1: to make connections and see these gender biases everywhere. Is
18:59
Speaker 1: that fair? Yeah? I think we tend to think of
19:01
Speaker 1: the forces of innovation and technology as these sort of neutral,
19:05
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful, rational things that are just sort of pushing everything.
19:10
Speaker 1: You know, the economy, US society, our lives so long,
19:13
Speaker 1: and that's not really how it works. You know, we
19:16
Speaker 1: are the ones inventing and building machines and funding machines
19:19
Speaker 1: and buying machines and not just machines but products, and
19:23
Speaker 1: we come into all of these activities shaped by our biases,
19:26
Speaker 1: and I think gender is a really big one. Here.
19:29
Speaker 1: The trouble is of biases. They're really easy to see
19:31
Speaker 1: in other people and not very easy to see in
19:33
Speaker 1: yourself pointing out your biases as well. I'm not biased,
19:36
Speaker 1: of course, I'm not bias. I'm absolutely rational and completely
19:39
Speaker 1: open minded and down the middle, and I'm absolutely perfect,
19:42
Speaker 1: which in my case is true. But everyone else I've
19:44
Speaker 1: noticed is very, very biased, very biased. Well, I suppose
19:48
Speaker 1: that's going to be true. I suppose when we think
19:50
Speaker 1: about history of inventions, particularly I don't know, the Victorians,
19:53
Speaker 1: our minds turn to steam engines and such. It does
19:55
Speaker 1: tend to be a very male dominated world, not for
19:59
Speaker 1: the fact that men are more creative, but just the
20:01
Speaker 1: way that society and institutions were set up. Yeah, not
20:05
Speaker 1: just that, I mean, I think I would go further.
20:07
Speaker 1: I would say that sort of our definition technology has
20:10
Speaker 1: almost always followed up a definition of masculinity or what
20:14
Speaker 1: men do. Sort, when men do something, it's it's an invention,
20:17
Speaker 1: you know, when women invent in software, which is you know,
20:20
Speaker 1: that's what the whole economy is run on. Now, it's
20:22
Speaker 1: a female invention. But back then it wasn't considered to
20:26
Speaker 1: be technology. Men were doing hardware, which was like the
20:29
Speaker 1: serious stuff, and women just happen to invent and develop
20:32
Speaker 1: and largely develop this thing called software, and women are
20:36
Speaker 1: written out a lot from the history of innovations, you know,
20:39
Speaker 1: the historians who talk about you know, why do we
20:42
Speaker 1: talk about the Bronze Age and the Iron age and
20:45
Speaker 1: not the ceramic age or the flax age. You know,
20:48
Speaker 1: ceramics or things that have to do with cloth. That's
20:51
Speaker 1: also technology. That's also innovation, but we don't think of
20:55
Speaker 1: it like that. And it's been largely developed and invented
20:58
Speaker 1: by women. So women get written out of this history
21:01
Speaker 1: of innovation, and when we study it, then we are
21:04
Speaker 1: basically studying our own absence, which doesn't make women feel that,
21:08
Speaker 1: you know, being an innovator is something, it's an identity
21:11
Speaker 1: that's available to them. Yeah, it's not good. No, it's
21:14
Speaker 1: an interesting Well, actually, we did a program about the
21:16
Speaker 1: history of the space suits and I'll see Dover, which
21:19
Speaker 1: was a division of PLATEX of course, used to make
21:21
Speaker 1: brows and girdles, and actually the space suits that the
21:24
Speaker 1: Apollo astronauts wore on the moon. Of course, we're all
21:26
Speaker 1: handstitched by these fantastic women. These seamstresses from Delaware who
21:30
Speaker 1: were amazing, And it's one of those stories that kind
21:32
Speaker 1: of got lost the annals of innovation and invention, the
21:34
Speaker 1: fact that you know, these women who are constructing these
21:37
Speaker 1: extraordinary I don't want to say outfits, because they're more
21:39
Speaker 1: than outfits. There are sort of wearable spacecraft. And I
21:42
Speaker 1: guess it's why has that happened? And is it changing?
21:44
Speaker 1: Are our attitudes towards innovation and invention changing? Now? Do
21:48
Speaker 1: you think are are we still in a very male world? Well?
21:50
Speaker 1: I think if you just sort of do a simple
21:52
Speaker 1: exercise of following the money. So I mean, I'm Swedish.
21:56
Speaker 1: In Sweden, one percent of all venture capital goes to women.
22:00
Speaker 1: In Britain it's the same, it's one percent, and you know,
22:03
Speaker 1: and that's mainly white women. I think black British women
22:07
Speaker 1: gets zero points zero two sentible venture capital. And obviously
22:11
Speaker 1: there are other ways of funding new ideas and innovations
22:14
Speaker 1: than venture capital, but venture capital is certainly very powerful
22:18
Speaker 1: and men do have a monopoly on this type of funding,
22:22
Speaker 1: which means that that's not just a problem for today,
22:25
Speaker 1: that's a problem for the next twenty twenty five years,
22:27
Speaker 1: because it means that you know, the big innovations, the
22:30
Speaker 1: big business models that will define large sectors of the
22:33
Speaker 1: economy are all being developed by men with women absent.
22:37
Speaker 1: So it's still a problem. I want to sort of
22:39
Speaker 1: end on a little bit more about wheel suitcases that
22:42
Speaker 1: they sort of reached their zenith. It defines zenith. Well,
22:46
Speaker 1: is it like we've reached the pinnacle of that's it
22:49
Speaker 1: for wheelsuitcase? There are no more innovations for wheel suitcases.
22:51
Speaker 1: That's it. Well, that would be like famous last words, right,
22:54
Speaker 1: I mean, but the history of innovation tells us that
22:57
Speaker 1: there's always something coming. Well, I think there's become this
22:59
Speaker 1: kind of standardized size of wheelsuitcases. It's that you know,
23:02
Speaker 1: when you go into an airport and you've got your
23:03
Speaker 1: wheelsuitcase and they've got like a measuring thing and it's
23:06
Speaker 1: got to fit in there. Presumably as well as gender,
23:09
Speaker 1: economics must have something to do with suitcase size, because
23:12
Speaker 1: you know you're carrying on lugge. It has to be
23:14
Speaker 1: this size in order to fit in the stow way,
23:15
Speaker 1: and the bigger it is, the fewer seats you can sell.
23:17
Speaker 1: Therefore they want them to be as small as possible. Yeah, no, absolutely,
23:21
Speaker 1: it feels that they've figured out the ultimate size and
23:23
Speaker 1: we've adapted to that. I mean, I think is this
23:27
Speaker 1: the end? I'm sure there be some kind of development,
23:30
Speaker 1: and travel will certainly change things, so I don't dare
23:34
Speaker 1: to say this is it, but I do think it's
23:36
Speaker 1: worth having this in mind when you see a rolling suitcase,
23:40
Speaker 1: to just think of this sort of very gendered resistance
23:43
Speaker 1: against the product that was there for so long and
23:45
Speaker 1: now we take it for granted. And if if anything,
23:48
Speaker 1: I think it's a reminder of how, you know, incredibly
23:53
Speaker 1: serious we take our ideas of gender. You know, oh,
23:56
Speaker 1: a man cannot roll a suitcase. Obviously, this product is
24:02
Speaker 1: completely ridiculous, no man will ever buy it, and then
24:05
Speaker 1: you know, two decades later it is something that every
24:08
Speaker 1: business man has and nobody thinks of it. So it's
24:11
Speaker 1: also I think a story of how gender roles can
24:14
Speaker 1: change very quickly, and obviously how they can hold innovation
24:18
Speaker 1: back and often do. Brilliant Kaden, thank you so much
24:22
Speaker 1: for coming. I will never look at my wheels. Actually
24:24
Speaker 1: that's the thing that really annoys me about oil shoot crass.
24:27
Speaker 1: First of all, the handles always break. They always get
24:29
Speaker 1: to a point where they don't telescope enough, and I
24:31
Speaker 1: find myself having to lean over. Yeah, and at some
24:33
Speaker 1: point the wheel always they get stuff caught in them
24:36
Speaker 1: and they break, and I find them quite frustrating. It's annoying.
24:39
Speaker 1: Then be a real man carry instead. Maybe I'll yeah,
24:42
Speaker 1: maybe I'll go back in time. Maybe I'll become a
24:44
Speaker 1: macho person, have a really heavy leather suitcase. Yeah. Well,
24:48
Speaker 1: actually doing what others have my own port they'll just
24:50
Speaker 1: carry for me. That is always a solution. Hire, it'd
24:53
Speaker 1: be much more civilized. Thank you very much, Thank you,
25:02
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us today. I hope
25:03
Speaker 1: you enjoyed the episode. By the way, if there's an
25:06
Speaker 1: invention story that you'd like to know more about, you've
25:09
Speaker 1: got a favorite invention story you'd like me to cover
25:11
Speaker 1: on the podcast, do get in touch. You can find
25:14
Speaker 1: me at Dallas Campbell on Twitter, or stop me in
25:16
Speaker 1: the street if you see me wandering about. I am
25:19
Speaker 1: back every Wednesday and Sunday with brand new episodes, So
25:22
Speaker 1: make sure that you subscribe to the series. Make sure
25:25
Speaker 1: you leave us a nice review if you've been enjoying it.
25:28
Speaker 1: Coming up next, we have an episode all about how
25:31
Speaker 1: the smallest objects can make the biggest difference. I'll see
25:36
Speaker 1: you then. That was an episode of Patented, The History
25:43
Speaker 1: of Inventions. They've done podcasts on everything from condoms to
25:47
Speaker 1: steam trains. Patented is from our friends over at History
25:51
Speaker 1: Hit and it is available wherever