Who Invented The Lightweight Foldable Pram?

Oct 4, 2024

The evolution of the traditional pram has involved some of the most fascinating and inventive people who have ever lived and led to some truly unique designs and unthinkable upgrades.

A landscape gardener and architect created the first pram in the 18th century and the first reversible pram was made by William H. Robinson in the late 1890s, using many design principles that are used today.

The foldable pram, however, has been one of the most important developments in stroller design and was designed by an aeronautical engineer who had helped to develop improvements to the Supermarine Spitfire plane.

Owen Maclaren developed an undercarriage design meant to help planes deal with cross winds and land safely whilst “crabbing”, as well as a radiator design that would increase the chances of aircraft surviving a shot from an anti-aircraft bullet.

After designing anti-lock brakes and moving away from the design side of the business to focus on the overall operations of Andrews Maclaren, he stumbled upon the idea of putting his aeronautical expertise to a much better use when meeting his first grandchild Anne.

His daughter had married someone working for Pan Am Airways, meaning that she was constantly flying with her young daughter and struggling with the existing fixed baby carriages of the day to get up and down aeroplane staircases.

Mr Maclaren decided to fix this using his own expertise, using some of the work he had already done on a folding chair and working with lightweight aluminium to create a foldable buggy that would become almost ubiquitous, whether made by him or by other companies once the patent expired.

Not long after receiving an MBE for his work, he died in 1978, although the Maclaren company would continue to create buggies for another 30 years, although it appears that the company has since gone bankrupt as of 2020 after decades of financial troubles.