Sylvan Goldman (1898-1984) was the owner of the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma City when in 1937 he struck upon the idea of the shopping cart. Goldman had observed that shoppers would often struggle with the wire and wicker baskets once they became too full, and he realized that this would stop them from buying. His initial inspiration for the design came from a folding chair in his office. Along with employee Fred Young, Goldman designed and built the first shopping cart, which held two wire baskets, one above the other, in a metal frame with wheels at the base. When the carts were not in use, the frame would fold flat, like the chair that suggested the design.
Goldman founded the Folding Carrier Basket Co., while a mechanic called Arthur Kosted developed a production line process to mass produce the carts, and began to introduce them in his stores. They were initially unsuccessful as men found them effeminate, and women found them a little too close to strollers. As one customer said to Goldman, "I have been pushing enough baby carriages." Goldman overcame this problem by employing models of both sexes and various ages to use the carts around the store. The carts took off, with a seven year waiting list by 1940, and Goldman made his fortune collecting royalties on every shopping cart until his patents expired.
Although his original design did well, Goldman improved it some years later by developing the "nest" carts, now ubiquitous across the world. With a single basket, and significantly more room, this design has to its credit that nothing has been found to replace it after more than seventy years of use.
