{{Short description|American businessman and inventor}} {{Infobox person | name = Sylvan Goldman | image = Sylvan Goldman.jpg | alt = | caption = Sylvan Goldman | birth_name = Sylvan Nathan Goldman | birth_date = {{Birth date|mf=yes|1898|11|15}} | birth_place = Ardmore, Indian Territory, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|mf=yes|1984|11|25|1898|11|15}} | death_place = Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S. | parents = Michael Goldman<br> Hortense Dreyfus | spouse = Margaret Katz | children = Monte Goldman<br>Alfred Goldman | other_names = | known_for = Supermarket developer<br>Inventor of the shopping cart | occupation = Businessman }}
'''Sylvan Nathan Goldman''' (November 15, 1898 – November 25, 1984) was an American businessman and inventor of the shopping cart. His design had a pair of large wire baskets connected by tubular metal arms with four wheels.<ref name="WilsonOnGoldman">Terry P. Wilson, ''The Cart that Changed the World: The Career of Sylvan N. Goldman'' (University of Oklahoma Press, 1978). {{ISBN|978-0-8061-1496-5}}</ref><ref name="TedlowOnWilson">Richard S. Tedlow, "Review of Wilson, T. P., 1978, ''The Cart That Changed the World: The Career of Sylvan N. Goldman''", in ''The Business History Review'', vol. 54, no. 1, 1980, pp. 135-136</ref><ref name="MorganOnGoldman">Ted Morgan, ''On Becoming American: A Celebration of What it Means and How it Feels'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978, pp. 45-6). {{ISBN|978-0-395-26283-2}}</ref>
==Early life== Goldman was born Sylvan Nathan Goldman to a Jewish family,<ref name=JewishHeritage>[http://www.jewishamericanheritagemonth.us/statestories.aspx Jewish American Heritage Month website: "Oklahoma: Sylvan Nathan Goldman 1898-1984"] retrieved April 14, 2013</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=DGn8UMzI--8C&q=goldman%27&pg=PA116 We Are Many: Reflections On American Jewish History And Identity By Edward S Shapiro] page 122</ref> the son of Hortense (born Dreyfus)<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper>[https://books.google.com/books?id=kCAiPMxjo8EC&pg=PA93-IA218 ''Shopping Center and Store Leases,'' Volume 2 By Emanuel B. Halper] retrieved April 13, 2013</ref> and Michael Goldman, in Ardmore, Indian Territory.<ref name=OKDigitalLibrary>[http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/g/go004.html Oklahoma State University Digital Library: "GOLDMAN, SYLVAN NATHAN (1898-1984)"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121206113233/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/G/GO004.html |date=2012-12-06 }} retrieved April 14, 2013</ref> His mother had emigrated from Scharrachbergheim<ref>His mother Hortense was born Henriette in Scharrachbergheim in 1873. Refer to: https://archives.bas-rhin.fr/ consulted on February 8, 2025</ref> in Alsace-Lorraine (today France) and his father from Latvia.<ref name=JewishHeritage /> He had one older brother, Alfred.<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper /> His father worked at various dry goods stores owned by his wife's family, one of which was located in Indian territory where Sylvan was born.<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper /> Sylvan was raised in the Jewish faith and was bar mitzvahed.<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper /> Sylvan learned the retail trade from his father and his mother's uncles.<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper />
Goldman served in World War I as a food requisitionist in France.<ref name=OKDigitalLibrary /> His brother served in the US Army but was discharged for health reasons. Goldman was not educated past the eighth grade.<ref name=JewishHeritage />
==Career== After the war, in 1919,<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper /> Sylvan and his brother Alfred opened the ''Goldman Brothers Wholesale Fruits and Produce'' in Breckenridge, Texas.<ref name=OKDigitalLibrary /> They were initially very successful due to the then oil boom in Texas, but their situation quickly deteriorated once the boom ended.<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper /> The brothers then moved to California, where they worked for grocery wholesalers.<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper /> Initially planning on opening their own wholesale food business in California,<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper /><ref name=OKDigitalLibrary /> they instead returned to Oklahoma at the behest of their uncles who wanted to start their own retail food store chain. The uncles offered to put up all the money as well as to cede the brothers a 75% interest in the venture.<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper /> Accepting the generous offer and armed with an understanding of a new store concept that they had seen in California, the "supermarket" – where all different types of food were available for sale in a single store and customers served themselves – they returned to Oklahoma and founded the state's first supermarket, the ''Sun Grocery Company''.<ref name=OKDigitalLibrary /> They opened their first store on April 3, 1920, at 1403 East Fifteenth Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with Sylvan serving as president and Alfred as vice president.<ref name=OKDigitalLibrary /> Within one year, they were operating twenty-one Sun Grocery markets throughout the state.<ref name=OKDigitalLibrary /> Within three years, they had fifty-five stores.<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper />
In 1929, they sold the Sun chain to ''Skaggs-Safeway Stores'' several months before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Despite reaping a generous and timely sum from the Safeway sale, Goldman and his brother lost much of their fortune in the crash; and being banned from competing with Safeway in Tulsa due to a non-competition agreement, they moved to Oklahoma City where they purchased five grocery stores and formed a new company called ''Standard Grocery.''<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper /> They soon implemented the lessons they had learned in Tulsa and with their profits purchased the faltering ''Humpty-Dumpty'' grocery store chain in 1934.<ref name=OKDigitalLibrary /> Alfred died in 1937.<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper />
In 1943, Sylvan merged the two brands into one company: ''Standard-Humpty Dumpty''.<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper /> Concerned with alleviating the difficulty women had with the self-serve concept as they often had to handle both the shopping basket and children, he developed what was to become the shopping cart.<ref name=ShoppingCenterHalper />
===Invention of shopping cart=== {{See also|Shopping cart#Development of first shopping cart by Sylvan Goldman|label 1=Shopping cart § Development of first shopping cart by Sylvan Goldman}}
He introduced the device on June 4, 1937, in the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma City, of which he was the owner. With the assistance of a mechanic named Fred Young, Goldman constructed the first shopping cart, basing his design on that of a wooden folding chair. They built it with a metal frame and added wheels and wire baskets. Another mechanic, Arthur Kosted, developed a method to mass-produce the carts by inventing an assembly line capable of forming and welding the wire. The cart was awarded patent number 2,196,914 on April 9, 1940 (Filing date: March 14, 1938), titled, "Folding Basket Carriage for Self-Service Stores". They advertised the invention as part of a new "No Basket Carrying Plan."
The invention did not catch on immediately. Men found them effeminate; women found them suggestive of a baby carriage. "I've pushed my last baby buggy," offended women informed him. {{Citation needed|date=August 2025}} After hiring several male and female models to push his new invention around his store and demonstrate their utility, as well as greeters to explain their use, his folding-style shopping carts became extremely popular and Goldman became a multimillionaire by collecting a royalty on every folding design shopping cart in the United States.
{{Quote box | quote = In 1977, Goldman was interviewed by CBS reporter Charles Kuralt:<ref>{{Cite news |last=Yu |first=Mallory |date=2025-03-29 |title=The history of the shopping cart |url=https://www.npr.org/2025/03/29/nx-s1-5340722/the-history-of-the-shopping-cart |access-date=2025-09-02 |work=NPR |language=en}}</ref>
'''Kuralt''': What would our country be like if you'd never invented the shopping cart?
'''Goldman''': Oh, I'll tell you, it'd be just like it is now because somebody else would have. }}
Sylvan Goldman also manufactured the more familiar and more modern "nesting cart" under a license granted by Telescope Carts, Inc.<ref name=autogenerated1>{{cite web|author=Catherine Grandclément |url=https://www.csi.minesparis.psl.eu/working-papers/WP/WP_CSI_006.pdf |title=Wheeling food products around the store... and away: the invention of the shopping cart, 1936-1953 |publisher=Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation, Ecole des Mines de Paris |year=2006 |access-date=2013-05-23}}</ref> In 1946, Orla Watson, co-founder of Telescope Carts, Inc. developed an innovative "nesting" shopping cart that did not require disassembly after each use as Goldman's designs did, and which allowed for the shopping carts to telescope, or "nest", by simply shoving the carts together.<ref name=autogenerated1 /> Goldman patented his own "Nest-Kart" over a year later in 1948, so an interference investigation was ordered by Watson of Telescope Carts, Inc. for alleged patent infringement during the same time period.<ref name=autogenerated1 /><ref>{{cite web|author=Jeanne Sklar |url=http://amhistory.si.edu/archives/d8739.htm |title=Telescoping shopping cart collection 1946-1983; 2000 #739 |publisher=Archives Center National Museum of American History |year=2000 |access-date=2013-05-23}}</ref> In a compromise solution, Goldman agreed to relinquish his rights on his existing patent and agreed to pay the sum of $1 for counterfeit damages.<ref name=autogenerated1 /> In return, Telescope Cart, Inc. agreed to an exclusive license granted to Goldman's company for the production of the telescoping, or "nesting", cart. The telescoping cart, based on the patent issued to Watson, forms the basis of the shopping cart designs used to the present, and all royalties for the new design were paid to Telescope Carts, Inc. until their patent expired.<ref name=autogenerated1 />
=== Other inventions=== Other inventions by Goldman include the grocery sacker, the folding inter-office basket carrier, and the handy milk bottle rack. Goldman also invented the baggage cart.<ref name=OKDigitalLibrary />
==Philanthropy== thumb|right
Goldman and his wife were known for their philanthropy. As a patron of the arts he contributed many works of art to Oklahoma institutions. He gave time and money to the National Conference of Christians and Jews at the Southwest Center for Human Relations at the University of Oklahoma. He received many honors, including honorary chief of the Pawnee Indian Tribe (1950), the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanities Award (1965), a Distinguished Service Citation from the University of Oklahoma (1971), induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame (1971), and an honorary doctor of law degree from Oklahoma City University (1974). In 1981 he funded the construction of the portico and western entry of Temple B'nai Israel (Oklahoma City). In January 1983 the Oklahoma Blood Institute moved to the Sylvan N. Goldman Center, located at 1001 North Lincoln Boulevard and named for Goldman, who donated $1.5 million for the center.<ref name=OKDigitalLibrary />
==Personal life== On June 7, 1931, Goldman married Margaret "Babe" Katz (1906–1984) of Stillwater, Oklahoma; they had two sons: Monte Henry Goldman and Alfred Dreyfus Goldman.<ref name=OKDigitalLibrary /><ref>[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-10-15-fi-16339-story.html Los Angeles Times: "The Forbes 400 : Walton Tops List of Richest Americans"] October 15, 1985</ref> Monte took his own life in 1995<ref>{{Cite news|title=Heir to Huge City Fortune, Goldman Commits Suicide|newspaper=The Oklahoman|date=January 12, 1995 |url= https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/1995/01/12/heir-to-huge-city-fortune-goldman-commits-suicide/62403242007/|access-date=June 5, 2024}}</ref> and Alfred died in 1997 following a long illness.<ref name=HonoluluSuicide>{{Cite news|title=Former Kaiser estate owner found dead|newspaper=Honolulu Star Bulletin|date=October 28, 1997 |url=http://archives.starbulletin.com/97/10/28/news/briefs.html }}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== * [https://web.archive.org/web/20121206113233/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/G/GO004.html Entry in ''Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture''] * [https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/27/obituaries/sylvan-n-goldman-86-dies-inventor-of-the-shopping-cart.html ''Sylvan N. Goldman, 86, Dies; Inventor of the Shopping Cart | NY Times | November 27, 1984'']
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goldman, Sylvan}} Category:1898 births Category:1984 deaths Category:People from Ardmore, Oklahoma Category:20th-century American inventors Category:20th-century American philanthropists Category:20th-century American Jews Category:Inventors from Oklahoma Category:Jews from Oklahoma