Rollaboard luggage celebrates a wheelie big birthday

— -- The innovation that revolutionized the traveler's world had humble beginnings.

Inventor and Northwest Airlines pilot Bob Plath's eureka moment came as he waited at an airport security checkpoint behind passengers struggling to free their bungee-cord-attached bags from bulky metal luggage trolleys. He headed for his garage workshop, tinkered a bit and returned to the airport with a luggage trolley screwed onto a hard-sided bag.

"The (security guard) said I had to take the suitcase off the trolley and I said, 'I can't,' and he said, 'OK,' and I said, 'I got 'em!' "

And the rest, as they say, is history.

It was 25 years ago that Plath's Rollaboard bag changed the orientation of a suitcase from horizontal to vertical with the simple addition of two wheels and an extending handle, bringing relief to legions of travelers. (Seventeen years earlier, luggage executive Bernard Sadow attached four wheels and a pull strap to a bag, creating the first wheeled suitcase, but the design lacked the nimbleness of Plath's upright wheeled bag.)

The Rollaboard liberated travelers from bellhops and porters. It prompted airlines to reconfigure overhead bins to accommodate 22-inch wheeled carry-ons. It sparked a new pack-light sensibility among travelers. And it inspired a slew of imitators, invigorating the travel goods market.

"The upright carry-on revolutionized the travel goods industry," says Michele Marini Pittenger, president of the Travel Goods Association.

But more recently, so have airline surcharges and government regulations, both of which have sparked innovations.

Among them:

Compressible and collapsible luggage

Bags that expand and contract for customized packing and/or compact storage garnered buzz at this year's Travel Goods Association expo. The show's first-place winner for innovation was the Road Warrior M-Series bags by Trunk & Trolley ($200-$600), which, with the pull of an interior rip cord, collapse to half their depth.

This week, New York-based Biaggi introduced a rigid, lightweight "foldable" collection (suitcases are $219-$339) that relies on a new hinge-lock technology to reduce the size of each bag by half for compact storage in tight spaces.

And Lipault of Paris' foldable bags ($189-$249), which made their debut in North America in 2010, collapse to a svelte 4 inches for practical storage.

Both Briggs & Riley and Samsonite have introduced zipperless systems that expand and contract the cases for more efficient packing. Briggs & Riley's Baseline Collection ($399-$549) features CX compression, which increases capacity by up to 34%. Samsonite's new Compressor model ($299) has interior ratchets that expand the bag's depth by 3 inches, then compresses after it's packed.

Lighter-weight bags

With most major airlines now charging for checked and overweight bags, manufacturers have embarked on a weight-loss quest. Wheeled upright carry-ons, which once typically weighed in at around 15 pounds, are down to about 5 pounds, says Pittenger. It Luggage USA has introduced what it dubs the World's Lightest 2-Wheeled Carry-on, a 20-inch bag that weighs just 3.4 pounds ($70-100). Even some larger stripped-down bags now weigh as little as 7 pounds, she adds.

Greater maneuverability