What Is Obvious? | Hacker News Reader

What Is Obvious?

14 pointsAlbertCory17 comments

It's good to see "what is obvious?" is still one of those evergreen topics, like it's been for 150 years.

(Continuing a discussion about obviousness in patents from yesterday, which no one is seeing because it's not on the front page anymore)

Now I have an even better one for you, and I'll withhold my (undoubtedly correct) answer until later:

Wheels on luggage. Why were they so late in coming along? Was it not obvious?

We had aftermarket wheeled carriers for strapping your suitcase in, so people recognized the need. The arguments that "people hired porters or trolleys" and "railroad stations had cobblestone floors" do not hold up at all -- no, they didn't, and airports had hard floors.

You can find articles on this topic. I think they're all wrong. Go.

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Retired patent attorney here. It boils down to a) sufficient pain; and b) cheap-enough way to make that pain go away that people will actually pay for it.

Lots of reasons not to have wheels on luggage:

  1. they stick out, making them tricky to put into overhead compartments;
  2. they need a certain degree of durability, while rolling;
  3. they need a certain degree of durability, when getting smushed together in a trunk, compartment, or baggage-handling carousel;
  4. they can't be too expensive/complicated, or part 'b' isn't satisfied.

Consider, also, that its only been the last 10-25 years or so that virtually all parts of grocery carts could be made 100% from durable plastic, and still hold up (and I'm still uncertain that no metal is present in the axels/bearings).

Further, there are lots of weight restrictions, which heavier bags (the 'shell' if you will), necessarily impinge upon.

I learned a lot putting this together. I wasn't totally right about it.

Someone at the Montana Historical Society gave a talk [2] on "the history of luggage," believe it or not.

In 1971 someone made and patented a suitcase that you pulled with a strap. It didn't catch on, and [2] says that porters in airports, who were accustomed to getting tips, denigrated them as "for sissies." Department stores didn't sell them, because of course they didn't want to market to sissies.

In the late 80's, Robert Plath made his own Roll-aboard and patented it [3]. That's what caught on.

So what happened in those 16 years? You had a clear market need, evidenced by the clunky metal "luggage carriers" at 26:38 in [2]. And yet no one did it!

Here's where I think I was right: luggage companies thought "we could invest in R&D to make these, but the competition would just copy them and we'd be no better off but we'd have higher costs. You can't patent the things. We'll pass!"

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juUUayqVUTk at: 0:33 (the person under the ramp seems to be pushing a suitcase on wheels)

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLE5t-s_M1w at: 26:38 the after-market luggage carrier 27:10 the first wheeled luggage (1970) patented 1971

[3] https://patents.google.com/patent/US4995487A/en Robert Plath patented it in the late 80's and got pilots & flight attendants to wheel them through airports, thus "marketing" them to the public.

Now that I think of it... I inherited some generic, large suitcase from my family when I was young, in the early 2000s. I used it for some international house moves, where I had it absolutely packed to the brim with possessions, and I distinctly remember carrying it around and getting blisters on my palms from the pressure.

The thing is, it actually did have wheels. It had pissy little casters, about 1" in size at each corner, and basically totally useless/ornamental for anything but a perfectly flat floor. Also, the form factor was totally wrong - the wheels were on the bottom / long side of the traditional suitcase design; when resting on the wheels, the handle was still at about knee or thigh height.

So, it's not just a matter of having wheels or not, it's also about the vertical form factor modern "spinner" suitcases, as well as the extendable handle. I'm no luggage expert, but I suspect the telescoping / extending handle is actually fairly tricky to manufacture as compared with slapping some caster wheels on the bottom.

>Wheels on luggage. Why were they so late in coming along? Was it not obvious?

Only in hindsight, in my opinion.

You needed the inconvenience of hauling it around to recognize there had to be a better way, just like all other forms of innovation it comes with experience and something to correct or smooth over.

It's also most useful when you only have one or two pieces of luggage. When travel was often longer, people took more luggage with them. Faster (air) travel and shorter trips (or better access to reliable laundry services on longer trips) reduces the need to carry multiple large pieces of luggage.

If you're carrying multiple large pieces of luggage, wheels are, at best, unused, and at worse a nuisance (they stick out and make stacking harder). Retractable wheels would be even more of a nuisance as they reduce the carrying capacity of the luggage.

It's also worth noting trends in how people dressed. Even in the 1960s my great-grandfather was wearing a suit to work. He worked in a mechanics shop as a mechanic. That's what people wore to work, now consider what they wore on trips. It was going to be at least as nice as that, and not the sweatpants and yoga pants that you see today. This greatly increases the amount of things (by bulk or quantity) that you need to carry.

No, I don't think that's it. Only in 40s movies do women travel with great piles of trunks, hat boxes, and odd-shaped luggage.

Most people had regular hard-shell suitcases with handles, and brought just one or two with them, just like now.

Since, according to you, everyone else is wrong and you have the answer, what is it?

Patience, @Jtsummers. I'm hearing lots of ideas I'd never thought of before.

Autonomous self-navigating luggage, that's obvious, why do I need to haul it?

still not available, AFAIK!

Now that one really IS dependent on computers being small enough, and on there being high-quality indoor maps available. Also, sensors to keep it from running into things & people.

Air travel was pretty common in the 70s, and had been for 20 years at least. Rail travel had been around much longer, of course, and as I said, the stations had hard, flat floors and so did the walkways to the trains.

Maybe because there used to be porters and servants to carry the bags

Nope. I flew in the 70s. There were not porters around in airports, at least not that most people used. Airports were pretty much the same as now.

Apparently there were enough porters for them to organize. The power of a small but intense group, once again.

Probably that luggage in general was a luxury item as it wasn't used that often by most people and wheels made it moreso. Eventually prices came down.

So the argument is most people couldn't afford luggage at all? No, I don't think so. Almost everyone had at least one suitcase.

It probably did cost more relative to wages, but so did everything.

Pushing it around on wheels makes you look wimpy when no one else is doing it?

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