Believe it or not, babies used to get carried around most of the time in adults' arms or in home-made slings. In increasingly urban environments it started to make sense that babies could have their own little wagons rather than have to be carried all the time.

The inventor of the pram (or "perambulator", as he first called it) was an Englishman, Charles Burtonm living in New York City in 1848. His invention was welcomed; people thought it just added to the madness of already crowded and busy streets and pavements.

Undaunted, Burton returned to England to open a factory there. He was very lucky that the idea caught on with European aristocracy; Queen Victoria is said to have ordered 3 of these new-fangled baby transport devices.

It wasn't until almost 1860 that F.A. and F.W. Whitney opened the first baby carriage factory in the USA. The idea still took a while to take off in America; only about 80 were sold in the first year.