An essential tool. An inspiration for artists. A public nuisance. The humble shopping cart has been all of these in the decades since it was invented. But what does it reveal about our character?
The next time you go to the grocery store, consider the ordinary shopping cart as something more than a rattling basket blocking jeeter
your parking space.
In the 1930s, an American grocer the precursor to the modern day shopping cart, using a folding frame that was fixed on a set of wheels. He hoped that people would buy more groceries if they did not have to carry heavy baskets as they browsed.
And
But over the decades, the shopping cart has evolved from its mundane existence as the centerpiece of every grocery store run.
Like can, it has become an unlikely icon in a subculture that celebrates the common object.