Shopping carts are used by customers in supermarkets and other large stores with self-service for transport of merchandise to the checkout counter during shopping. In British English shopping carts are called shopping trolleys. The term is used in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, South Africa and some regions of Canada.
Sylvan N. Goldman, the manager of Humpty Dumpty Stores and Standard Food Markets, a small supermarket in Oklahoma City, developed the shopping cart after he realized that if customers could carry more shopping, they would buy more. He asked one of his employees, a mechanic named Fred Young, to make him a "shopping basket on wheels", which was a folding metal chair, mounted on castors with two baskets fitted to the front and the chairback acting as a handle.
When Sylvan Goldman first introduced the shopping cart on June 4, 1937 people were hesitant to use it. Men thought it 'effeminate,' and women felt it demeaned their ability to carry a shopping basket. So he paid models to push his "shopping basket on wheels" around the store filled with groceries, in order to encourage his customers to do likewise. After a while shopping carts became extremely popular and Goldman became a multimillionaire.
A mechanic named Arthur Kosted developed a method to mass-produce the shopping carts by inventing an assembly line capable of forming and welding the wire. The cart was awarded patent number 2,196,914 on April 9, 1940.
The first ever shopping trolley appeared in the UK in 1950 when the first Sainsbury's self-service store opened in Croydon, Surrey.
In 1996 Sweden became the first country to charge someone with being drunk in charge of a shopping cart.
In continental European countries, the customer has to pay a small deposit by inserting a coin, token or card, which is returned if and when the customer returns the cart to a designated cart parking point. The reason for this is to reduce the expense of employees having to gather carts that are not returned. The deposit system is less common in the United Kingdom and Canada and has not been widely adopted in the United States, with the exception of some chains like the German owned Aldi, which require a $0.25 deposit.
A 2014 study published in the journal Clinical Pediatrics found that more than 24,000 US children every year are treated in hospital emergency departments for injuries involving supermarket shopping carts.
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| Pixabay |
Sylvan N. Goldman, the manager of Humpty Dumpty Stores and Standard Food Markets, a small supermarket in Oklahoma City, developed the shopping cart after he realized that if customers could carry more shopping, they would buy more. He asked one of his employees, a mechanic named Fred Young, to make him a "shopping basket on wheels", which was a folding metal chair, mounted on castors with two baskets fitted to the front and the chairback acting as a handle.
When Sylvan Goldman first introduced the shopping cart on June 4, 1937 people were hesitant to use it. Men thought it 'effeminate,' and women felt it demeaned their ability to carry a shopping basket. So he paid models to push his "shopping basket on wheels" around the store filled with groceries, in order to encourage his customers to do likewise. After a while shopping carts became extremely popular and Goldman became a multimillionaire.
A mechanic named Arthur Kosted developed a method to mass-produce the shopping carts by inventing an assembly line capable of forming and welding the wire. The cart was awarded patent number 2,196,914 on April 9, 1940.
 |
| Pixabay |
The first ever shopping trolley appeared in the UK in 1950 when the first Sainsbury's self-service store opened in Croydon, Surrey.
In 1996 Sweden became the first country to charge someone with being drunk in charge of a shopping cart.
In continental European countries, the customer has to pay a small deposit by inserting a coin, token or card, which is returned if and when the customer returns the cart to a designated cart parking point. The reason for this is to reduce the expense of employees having to gather carts that are not returned. The deposit system is less common in the United Kingdom and Canada and has not been widely adopted in the United States, with the exception of some chains like the German owned Aldi, which require a $0.25 deposit.
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| Pixabay |
A 2014 study published in the journal Clinical Pediatrics found that more than 24,000 US children every year are treated in hospital emergency departments for injuries involving supermarket shopping carts.
The shopping cart theory is a viral internet meme that judges character by how you handle shopping carts. Returning them shows consideration for others, while leaving them abandoned suggests laziness and selfishness. It gained popularity around 2020, sparking debate about its validity. While some find it humorous, others see it as a reminder of basic courtesy and responsibility.
Source The Book of Firsts by Ian Harrison
Source The Book of Firsts by Ian Harrison
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