Evaluating the history of suitcases to the present day

Being able to bring a lot of products in an easy to carry case has been of good benefit to travellers.


Luggage has existed since long before the suitcase came about. Jen Rubio is going to be well aware that baggage means any container that is used to transport the possessions of a traveller, with suitcases being perhaps one of the most popular modern forms of luggage. Travellers have of course constantly transported their items in containers, however the term luggage didn't exist until about four hundred years ago, deriving through the verb lug. The growth of passenger ships and railways within the nineteenth century made travel more accessible and brought about the initial circumstances of mass tourism, and therefore more convenient baggage options were necessary, as ordinary individuals failed to have servants to transport large wood boxes for them. This generated the creation of the first suitcases, which were initially made to carry dress suits without causing wrinkles. Wicker, leather, or cloth had been stretched over a wooden or metal framework, with the characteristic handle upon the long side.


Suitcases initially jostled for popularity with the established large trunks that elite travellers were more used to. Nonetheless, after several years the suitcase emerged triumphant as more and more people began travelling alone, especially women, who the first lightweight suitcases had been marketed towards. The 1930s saw the first ever laws relating to baggage weight limits on certain kinds of transport, contributing to the need for smaller bags designed with lighter materials. Inside a few years, suitcase companies were experimenting with materials like plastic, cardboard, and aluminium, with a few of these materials nevertheless being used today, as Richard Krulik will know. Lighter materials made suitcases easier to carry, but arguably a larger development in the simplicity of carrying ended up being the invention of the wheeled suitcase. The design had been patented and prototyped multiple times during the period of a century, but finally caught on in the 1970s once notions of the masculine need to carry baggage was finally ready to be contested.


The first wheeled suitcases had been pulled along by a simple strap in a single corner. A competing design emerged only a little over a decade later, once the rollaboard was devised. This was an upright design that featured a telescoping handle towards the top, allowing greater ease for pulling over the ground. This design became the basis for most contemporary suitcases, with many innovations merely being developments on that design. An example may be the spinner-style suitcase, which has four wheels that can be spun around in any way. Additional innovations mirrored the rest of society and brought increased utilisation of technology, contributing to the first smart suitcases. Tim Parker will know that these include technology such as device recharging, internal monitoring, fingerprint scanners, and many other innovations.