Mailbag: New Tech, 1945-Style

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