Hilary Greenbaum

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“He Employed Actors To Push Carts Through His Aisles”

December 18, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A brief passage about the history of the shopping cart, from a New York Times Magazine piece by Hilary Greenbaum and Dana Rubinstein:

“One night in 1936, [Sylvan] Goldman had an epiphany. ‘As he worked late in his office, his attention was drawn to two ordinary folding chairs,’ wrote Terry P. Wilson in The Cart That Changed the World, the seminal Goldman biography, published in 1978. What if, he wondered, one chair was placed on top of another? What if a basket was placed on top of each seat? What if it had wheels? The modern shopping cart was born.

Widely considered the inventor of the shopping cart, Goldman was no slouch as a promoter either. He ran ads in local newspapers that read, in part, ‘Can you imagine wending your way through a spacious food market without having to carry a cumbersome shopping basket on your arm?’ He stationed what he described as ‘an attractive girl’ near his store entrance to hype the new device. When it became clear that only the elderly were interested, he employed actors to push carts through his aisles.”

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In addition to customers, actors sometimes portray fictional, folksy CEOs. If things had broken differently, these people could have been cast as horse trainers or secret agents or bank robbers. It’s just a costume.

Colonel Harlan Sanders:

Bartles & Jaymes :

Betty Crocker:

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“During The 1920s, Department Stores Started Issuing Charge Plates Or Coins…To Encourage Loyal Customers To Run A Tab”

December 5, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Buying on credit will likely never cease, though the plastic cards that have long been part of the transactions may disappear. From a brief history of credit cards by Hilary Greenbaum and Dana Rubinstein in the New York Times Magazine:

“In Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy’s 1888 novel about a socialist utopia more than a century hence, citizens are issued ‘credit cards’ entitling them to shares of the national wealth. In today’s dystopian reality, people use a different sort of card to buy stuff on the Internet. Yet according to Robert Manning, a historian and author of Credit Card Nation, plastic remains ‘one of the top 10 innovations in the post-World War II period.’ Even if it owes its ubiquity, in part, to a New York businessman named Frank X. McNamara, who forgot to bring cash to a lunch meeting. In 1950, McNamara introduced a cardboard charge card. He called it the Diners Club.

During the 1920s, department stores started issuing charge plates or coins — round or rectangular and mostly made from metal — to encourage loyal customers to run a tab. The most popular, made by a company called Charga-Plate, was rectangular and big enough for an account number, a name and an address.”

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“He wines and dines without ever spending cash,” 1963:

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