All you need to know about the history of Backpacks

March 26 10:13 2018 by Diane Pauls Print This Article

If you are a student, a working professional, a hiker, a traveler, you need a backpack carrying your belongings effortlessly. But, if you think this is a new thing or a new idea, you are wrong, backpacks or items similar to backpack are used from way back past. The modern backpacks are young and estimated as only forty-four years old, but in these only forty-four years, there have been so many designs, and other changed.

Let’s have a look at students backpack from leather straps to JanSport packs:

• It might amaze someone to learn today that the first backpack wasn’t a pack at all. It was just a belt or piece of cloths strapped to the books to carry them easily. And it was a fashion for sometimes, but eventually, it went off style.
• Gerry Outdoors was the first to create backpacks with zippers in 1938. On those days backpacks were used for people who went for alpine recreation, camping and hiking. Students in between the 1930s and 1960s used to carry books on bags called as satchels. Satches are very small size briefcases. Buckled fastened square bags were also used by some students to carry their school stuff.
• In 1972, students had no other way but to carry their books on their hands or hold them on their chest to go to schools, some students used to tie them with a belt around them to carry them with less discomfort.
• After the nylon daypack came on the market, things began to change. It opened the door wide for backpack redesign. The claim is made that Gerry Outdoor was the first creator of modern-day nylon backpack, but in 1967 JanSport also began their first selling outlet. People left every other way of carrying bags and opted for the lighter backpacks and became very popular in a short time.

This became a significant trend, and the companies tailored the backpack such that it meets the needs of the students. The trend exploded, and many companies started making bags and design them so that they fit student’s fashion as well as meet their demand for carrying school stuff.

• In the 1980s, backpacks became a necessary accessory for students, and with other school, stuff backpacks were also supplied.

But things are changing again, backpacks not only carry books and pen and pencils, they also now carry digital tools. Backpack CND and other such companies are designing backpacks to support the modern day needs.