In 1937, a grocer in Oklahoma City had a problem he could not solve.
His customers stopped shopping too early.
Not because they ran out of money. Not because they had everything they needed. They stopped because their basket got heavy, and a heavy basket is a signal to a human brain that says you are done here.
Sylvan Goldman ran a chain of stores and watched this happen thousands of times a day. Woman fills basket. Basket gets heavy. Woman heads to the register with money still in her purse.
Every single one of those trips was leaving money on the shelf.
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So he took two folding chairs, put wheels on them, added a basket to each, and invented the shopping cart.
And here is the part that makes this story genuinely great.
Customers refused to use it.
Men thought it looked weak, like they could not carry their own groceries. Women thought it looked like pushing a baby carriage, and they had done enough of that. Older shoppers found it undignified.