Travel gear

Baggage or luggage consists of bags, cases, and containers which hold a traveller's articles during transit.

The modern traveller can be expected to have packages containing clothing, toiletries, small possessions, trip necessities, and on the return-trip, souvenirs. For some people, luggage and the style thereof is representative of the owner's wealth.

Baggage (not luggage), or baggage train, can also refer to the train of people and goods, both military and of a personal nature, which commonly followed pre-modern armies on campaign.

Luggage has changed over time. Historically the most common types of luggage were chests or trunks made of wood or other heavy materials. These would be shipped by professional movers. Since the Second World War smaller and more lightweight suitcases and bags that can be carried by an individual have become the main form of luggage.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word baggage comes from Old French bagage (from baguer "tie up") or from bagues ("bundles"). It may also be related to the word bag.

Also according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word luggage originally meant inconveniently heavy baggage and comes from the verb lug and the suffix -age.

Rolling suitcases were invented in 1970, when Bernard D. Sadow applied for a patent that was granted in 1972 as United States patent 3,653,474 for "Rolling Luggage". The patent application cited the increase in air travel, and "baggage handling [having] become perhaps the single biggest difficulty encountered by an air passenger", as background of the invention. Sadow's four-wheeled suitcases, pulled using a loose strap, were later surpassed in popularity by roll-aboards, suitcases that feature two wheels and are pulled in an upright position using a long handle (invented in 1987 by US pilot Robert Plath).

Sadow attributes the late invention of luggage on wheels to a "macho thing" where "men would not accept suitcases with wheels". Others attribute the late invention to "the abundance of luggage porters with carts in the 1960s, the ease of curbside drop-offs at much smaller airports and the heavy iron casters then available."

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Wikipedia