West Chester, Pennsylvania. Bugaboo Cameleon:
Bright and cheery. One doesn’t often see the pram version outside of NYC; it’s used for too few months per child, and the concentration of Bugaboos falls hugely once you’ve left the Upper East Side.
Monthly Archive for March, 2010
. . . or a thousand dollars, anyway. Why you might pay a huge amount of money for an eccentric modern stroller:
No, it’s not the trophy moms. It’s that high, conversational observation seat for the toddler, and the ability to hoist the infant above the worst of the automotive exhaust. Not to mention how nicely it keeps umbrella spokes and briefcase edges out of baby eyes, while at the same time offering the occupant a view of more than an endless sea of adult knees.
You rock, Xplory — too bad you don’t do it for, say, a mere 500 bucks, instead of a thousand big ones.
San Francisco, SFO. A German Gesslein, probably a Future :
Ask me how impressed I was to see that a charming young German couple flew to San Francisco with their super-tank of a pram/pushchair. No compromises here! At the end of their vacation, they were still thrilled to have had it, and why not? With a carriage this size, it’s possible to sightsee all day long without compromising a baby’s comfort one little bit. Take that, you wimpy North Americans with your plastic carseats-cum-baby-haulers!
The Siebert Steering Baby Carriage has been previously discussed here and here. This ad, from September, 1945, covers all the salient features of this unusual buggy in detail:
The sketch doesn’t look exactly like the real thing, but that’s not surprising; ads of the time often bore only a passing resemblance to the actual product as shown in other ads, or to the one owned by the visitor who first wrote to us:
What is surprising is that the smaller drawings detail the mechanics very well. The text extols the superior maneuverability the casters offer (it’s point no. 1 in the ad):
Swivel action wheels providing easy and tireless handling motion for going around curves and corners in the house or on the porch, or carriage will turn around in its own radius if necessary. Such easy steering is very helpful outdoors in turning corners, backing up, reversing direction, etc.
As the copywriter points out, this was
THE ONLY BABY CARRIAGE THAT REALLY STEERS
But that wasn’t its only important feature; Siebert also touts (point no. 4) the
Not-tip safety bar — this device ensures complete safety and prevents child from tipping over in carriage if left by himself or carriage is used as a bassinet.
At $37.95, this was not a cheap carriage. Prices for standard soft-bodied pram-type buggies tended to hover around $30.00; $50.00 was high (although true luxury prams would be higher).
Sadly, those fantastic casters weren’t even mentioned in a 1951 advertisement illustrated by a picture of the Siebert Steering Carriage, and by 1952, the steering carriage profile seems to have disappeared, supplanted by that of more conventional buggies like the “famous Siebert Slumberland” carriage:
Standard wheels. Sic transit gloria.
Related – Mailbag: New Tech, 1945-Style and Siebert Steering Carriage: The Patent
San Francisco, The Financial District (or, rather, on the edge thereof). Zooper Waltz:
Silhouette of a Maclaren, but it’s a flat-fold. This means you get a solid front bar, should such matter to you, and skip the awesome, grille-like grid that blocks the Mac’s basket. And you get a much bigger, slightly more accessible, basket. Of course, you won’t be flinging this one onto your shoulder to carry it, either, as you can with a Mac. Different strokes, as they say.
Pram Watch first took a look at the Siebert Steering Baby Carriage in an earlier post. It’s a very unusual design from 1945, featuring a set of swivel wheels instead of the fixed ones normally found on US baby carriages of that time.
In March of 1946, Donald W. Siebert applied for a patent, on behalf of the O. W. Siebert Company, for a “running gear for baby carriages and the like” — a brand-new use for the over-sized casters that were common on wheelchairs. Here’s a schematic from that filing:
Pretty cool, isn’t it? The innovation was essentially the simple addition of large, ordinary, casters, but it was a revolutionary idea on a buggy. There’s an interesting grille on the front (in the US, we might be tempted to call it a “cow catcher“) that guards the casters. Here a complete sketch from the patent filing, showing the grille in detail :
And here’s a close-up on the carriage:
The metal work is substantial, and nothing like what you’d see today:
Those hard rubber tires are typical of US strollers and prams of the era; if they look like tricycle tires, there’s a good reason. Like many other similar companies, Siebert also made tricycles, as well as other wheeled toys.
The patent, number 2,433,069, was granted on December 23, 1947 to Donald W. Siebert, the son of the company’s founder, and its president at the time of the grant.
This new and refreshing take on pram tech didn’t catch on. Donald Siebert’s radical re-engineering was too distant from the elegant look of the British prams nearly every US mother dreamed of — and too far ahead of its time. More’s the pity!
Related — Mailbag: New Tech, 1945-Style and Siebert Steering Carriage: Another Advert
San Francisco, California Academy of Sciences. Orbit:
Yes, folks, if you want to see more Orbits per square inch, CAS is the place to be. There’s no rest for the shutter in this territory. This Orbit chassis has the car seat attached. Orbit’s car seat is huge — much bigger and bulkier than everything else out there. But if you’re going to haul your kid around in a plastic box, it’s probably much nicer for the kid if it’s a big plastic box.
A visitor writes:
I’ve got a 50’s (?) pram from US and my question is if you know anything about it? . . . Do you know if it came originally with those front wheels or is it custom-made?
Why, yes, I do! Here’s the pram in question:
You can see why our visitor wonders about the wheels. And the answer is, yes, those front wheels are original. Your pram is a “Siebert Steering Baby Carriage”:
The hottest value on the market — this is the fastest selling carriage in the country; beautifully styled in luxuriously heavy coated cloth with chrome metal gear including bumper. See it and You’ll buy it.
That’s what the ad guys said, anyway. The claim of hot sales is undoubtedly over-blown; after the war, as before, mothers were acquiring prams as a matter of style as as much as practicality, and, in those heady days of conformist consumerism, most weren’t eager to push a buggy the neighbors might find peculiar.
Although I have loved this carriage from the moment I first saw it in an ad, this is not a model that captured either the hearts of mothers, nor of rival manufacturers, who, notably, did not rush to copy it.
Those wheels were definitely odd for the time. They are this buggy’s claim to fame: In every other respect, it’s very much like standard USA coaches from this era. It wasn’t until the advent of the Dutch Bugaboo in 1999 that kooky, over-sized swivel wheels became chic. Bugaboo made over-sized casters iconic; although the chassis is very different, you can see how modern the 1945 wheel alignment looks, immortalized here on a 2007 Netherlands stamp:
Bugaboo showed its own genius when they named their creation the “Frog”, which made a quirky virtue out of a silhouette that had no established market.
Otto W. Siebert founded the O. W. Siebert company, a manufacturer of baby carriages and velocipedes, in 1921 after an early association with H.N. Thayer in Erie, Pennsylvania, which also manufactured baby strollers and carriages.
Donald W. Siebert, the inventor of the steering baby carriage, was Otto’s son, and president of the company after his father’s retirement in 1946. O.W. Siebert was located in Gardner, Massachusetts, a heavy manufacturing area in the northeastern USA, from the late 1800s through the middle of the 20th century; this carriage was made there.
There’s more to learn about this Siebert; additional posts forthcoming.
Stamp image from Bugaboo
Related: Siebert Steering Carriage: The Patent and Siebert Steering Carriage: Another Advert
San Francisco, California Academy of Sciences. Orbit, with toddler seat:
Blurry, because this guy was booking along (and on the other side of the window). The hand position on the only Orbit I’ve tried was very uncomfortable for me, but the handles didn’t impede Mr. Speedy here one bit. Still, my own hands ache when I look at the angle of his wrists.
Wonder what an Herlag is? This Saturday, weather permitting, we’ll be at Westtown School attending a benefit for the Chester County Historical Society, and this lovely little kinderwagen will be in attendance:
This German-made beauty is typical of low prams that were popular in Europe in the 1950s and early 1960s. We’ll be strolling around: Come, support the Historical Society, and see if you can spot us.