to add concavity to the side of the luggage nearest the hip?
Luggage has always been among the slowest developing technologies throughout human history.
The wheel was invented quite some time ago. Humanity has used the wheel for a millenia or more for all sorts of old tech transportation. But not for luggage until rather recently.
For over a century, the wheel has enabled the emergence of trains, cars, trucks, airplanes, etc. Yet producers, designers and consumers of luggage only recently discovered sufficient virtue in the wheel to broadly standardize rolling luggage.
Once one could make the excuse that for many millenia only the wealthy traveled a great deal and they had servants and so did not care whether luggage was easy to carry.
But now servants are the exception among travelers. Now travelers tend to be their own pachyderms while in transit.
Today, it would seem travelers would cry out for functional improvements in their burdens and that technological advancement would be rampant.
But after the earth shattering (for the luggage industry) advancement of putting wheels and a long handle on luggage, stagnation has once again overcome luggage. All we see are new colors, new surface textures, and some weight saving materials probably being forced upon the bag manufacturers by strapped airlines lobbying to save on fuel by reducing the weight of luggage.
So I ask: what is keeping most luggage producers, designers, and consumers from broadly standardizing luggage with the ergonomic correctness of a concave side that faces toward the hip, when carrying rolling luggage by hand, as one has still to do intermittently during a trip?
Frankly, it would seem that especially in the many centuries before rolling luggage became ubiquitous, some critical mass of clear thinking would have emerged long, long ago among luggage producers, designers and consumers that a curved side facing the hip made carrying luggage without wheels easier, even for the slaves, who could have then carried even more suitcases full of luxuries.
What gives here?
I searched and found but one lonely luggage maker touting the hip-friendly design of concavity. And this producer even eliminates the problem of lost storage volume due to concavity on one side, by adding convexity to the other side.
Who is retarded in the luggage nexus? Producers? Designers? or consumers? Or some combination?
Why is the luggage industry so averse to any practical functional progress and so addicted to the sizzle of color and materials?
If a suitcase has wheels, does it really need to be made of carbon fiber, or titanium?
Well, I do have a goddamned hip and I am goddamned tired of it being banged by a goddamned cubic suitcase when I pick it up and carry it intermittently.
I might well buy the one pictured below if word of mouth verified that it were durable.
Signed,
Down and out on the concourse.
The bowl,
the cup and, later, the spoon must have been the first of man's wooden objects to be given a concavity. In this we have an example of that old saying, "Necessity is the mother of extra-labor-expended."
The chair seat followed some (uncomfortable) time later. . .
Failing the imperatives of function and comfort, the extra effort of scooping, gouging, and otherwise hollowing a flat piece of material is left undone. We still live in a world of flat and straight materials, due to the ways in which those materials are wrested from nature: Our tools make them that way.
The suitcase has, for it's entire period of existence, been arranged to have a major concavity -- on the inside. It would never have occurred, until now, for anyone to think that it should have a contradictory (?) hollow on the *outside.* But, I suppose for a long time the flat bench was considered adequate, too. Leave it to some sensitive soul to suggest that the lowly, functional hard-case should have a soft side, too ! Thus, the workings of Progress ?
Why not abandon "hard" luggage altogether?
I often wonder why people opt for hard cases in the first place. The best way to carry anything is close-to-the-body-- either slung over the shoulder or strapped to the back. Soft luggage is ideal for this, since it conforms to the body.
I, for one, can't STAND the chaos created by people and their lazy-man's wheeled luggage. A crowded terminal is maddening enough... a crowded terminal full of slow-moving oblivious zombies outfitted with granny-carts makes me apoplectic, when I'm in a hurry!
We agree on the virtues of soft luggage versus hardshells...
but a concave hard shell shaped might arc around your hip effectively. But then a nylon fabric bag with an arced frame might work even better.
FWIW, I have always carried fabric luggage of one kind or another, from my trusty Naval aviator's flight duffel, to a 1960s set of Ghurka luggage, to recent wheeled luggage with nylon fabric.
Regarding wheeled vs. non-wheeled, I find wheeled vastly superior in every instance I experience, and I once traveled for a living for 12 years...without rolling luggage, and have since traveled a good deal at home and abroad with wheels. What I find is that whatever speed the dawdlers go without wheeled luggage, they go faster with it.
But thanks for weighing in regardless. Your points are valid whether we agree totally or not.
I don't see a benefit, I...
I don't see a benefit, I hold my luggage out to the side of my body. My legs move along the center-line of each hip socket, not heal-to-toe like a female runway model. The indentation in the side just means I have to hold it that much farther away from my body.
To William, have you ever used a military style duffel bag? You can't just pop open the side of it and easily get at everything but you'd be surprised at how easy you can carry so much weight with one.
Just had a thought there, design a duffel bag with a side opening so you can get easily get at things on the 'bottom'.
I don't think it's so simple
DC:
You wrote, "And this producer even eliminates the problem of lost storage volume due to concavity on one side, by adding convexity to the other side."
Uh, that actually LOWERS the storage volume. Luggage needs to fit in a fixed-size rectangular box whose dimensions are specified by the airline. For maximum volume, the luggage should exactly fit inside the box; any space between the luggage and the box -- whether from concave OR convex shaping -- reduces the storage volume.
Also... The bag whose image you attached DOESN'T appear to be curved for hip comfort while carrying [does it even have a shoulder strap?]. Rather, it seems to be curved only for strength and to protect its polycarbonate finish... And so that its retractable pull-handle can be curved.
A curved handle IS a nice innovation that makes luggage more comfortable to pull: It moves the bag's CG rearward so more weight is on the wheels and less is on your wrist, tilts the bag upward to provide more clearance between it and your legs, reduces the "kickback" from the bag as you walk, etc.
These days, wheeled bags are so common that I wonder whether there's any market for an improved non-wheeled bag.
Nothing....
...can replace first hand experience, but I am a little bit suspicious when I am looking at this International Traveller Curved Hardside 24" Side Open Wheeled Packing Case Luggage?
Considering the fact that the handle should be as close as possible to a point on top of the centre of gravity, a curved shape will only slightly move the handle inward in other words the curve is not keeping the luggage away from your body all that much?and of course the front and back are intruding slightly into the space your legs need to walk?Having carried my duffel bag from one unit to the other and on and off board while I served in the navy, I have to agree with the rather nostagic view that this is the best way to carry something around. But I am not sure that it was based on confort or simply on the attention you get from the younger female travellers. The age group that serves in the military is not very representative either for the endurance of the general population?as we learned from Henry Dreyfuss? "Measure of man" largely based on the measurements of the military during WWII?.so I am in favour of wheels even if I have stubled more than ones over someone who decides to stop and pul the handle one step outside the plane..
I was surprised to read that the material was Polycarbonate. Not because it is not a strong material, on the contrary, but it is not very scratch resistant and it has the tendency to crack easily on the scratches. Samsonite and other use Polypropylene, which I think does the job very well. There are some other considerations with polycarbonate that are too technical to interest this forum?after all polycarbonate is no mahagony?But all things considerd I think it is the wrong material choice. I also dislike the large piece that conpensates for the size of the wheels. When are we going to do the obvious which is to link the pull out mechanism of the handle with a pull out mechanism of the wheels. If anybody thinks that it would take space I can help them out with some interesting solutions.
Would concavity near the hip even be an improvement?
For bags with shoulder straps, would concavity near the hip be helpful, or would it just bring the bottom edge of the bag closer to (or in contact with) the user's leg?
If you don't like banging your hip into your luggage, I imagine that you'd REALLY hate banging your knee into it with every step.
People don't walk faster with wheeled luggage,
they walk slower, like they're dragging an especially stubborn dog behind them, on a leash. Also, instead of occupying the usual 2 sq ft of public space, they occupy more like 8 sq ft.
The extra weight of the wheel & handle apparatus... combined with the fact that people are encouraged to overpack since they needn't rely on their own muscle power... combined with the fact that muscles atrophy if not used, means that when they're actually called upon to LIFT their luggage it's a physical impossibility.
I don't begrudge EVERYONE their granny carts-- just everyone who's healthy and under the age of 60.
hmmm
I'm just home from 6 airports in 3 days...
Wheels for me. I zipped past the poor souls with
big soft pouches over shoulders like pack mules.
Washington/Dulles, Newark without wheels?
Didn't lift it till i got to my car.
Doubles as a laptop table while waiting, even a seat if needed.
Nothing fancy, just good quality.
And note, all pilots and stewardesses wheel the same.
Baggage handlers prefer them. Top handle, and side handle.
Easier for them to pack on their carts and the birds belly.
I do travel light. But even for long trips i have a big soft duffel
with a hard sled bottom with wheels!
Opens wide from top to bottom.
Not fond of flying but i do like vintage airport furniture...
I feel as if I were talking with producers here, not designers 🙂
I confess it is daunting to talk about the ergonomic step of conceiving luggage that does not bang on one's hip/thigh, when there are still traditionalists among us opposed to wheels on luggage!
It is rather like entering into a discussion about adding suspension to ancient carts immediately after the wheel was first invented and gaining popularity and many still scoffed that real cavemen (and cavewomen)ought to drag everything on two sticks. 🙂
Ahem.
Lincoln said never try to overturn a pyramid. Chip away at and undermine it. 🙂
In the spirit of America's great and intermittently depressed President, let me approach designers perhaps more in the way they are comfortable being approached--with a question.
What, pray tell, can we do, short of surgically altering, or genetically re-engineering the human hip and shoulder, to make a piece of luggage so that it does not bang on the human hip, nor require a slight cantilevering of the human torso in the direction of the bag, during the times it must be carried?
Your turns. 🙂
the odd
little pillow is for back support. The leather is very good quality and
just sticks with pressure where you need it!
I did photograph the label under the cushion...i would guess by the
construction it is early 70's? B&B italia. Down filled.
Upstairs T4 at JFK.
(i have a big file of airport photos for another thread...apologies
for the hijack)
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