The Maclaren stroller is one of those great stories of British invention. The book Century Makers lists the Maclaren stroller as one of the hundred clever things we take for granted which have changed our lives over the last century. It all began in 1965 when Owen Maclaren designed and patented his prototype stroller. As a former test pilot and aeronautical designer, Owen Maclaren had been involved in the design of the Spitfire fighter plane undercarriage before World War II and therefore had immense knowledge of lightweight, rigid, load-bearing structures capable of folding neatly. He was spurred on by a visit from his daughter, her airline director husband, and his first grandchild who was born in the United States. The trip to England meant coping with an unwieldy pram.

So, after finding himself wheeling his grandchild around in a clumsy, heavy conventional pushchair, he had the inspiration to improve the humble vehicle. He did more. He invented a new generation of baby transport. Using modern lightweight materials like tubular aluminium, Maclaren developed a structure that could comfortably carry even a fairly large child and then fold into a space only a little bigger than that occupied by a rolled-up umbrella. The beauty of the new design was its lightness – with its aluminium frame it weighed just 3kg (6lbs) – and its three-dimensional folding mechanism that collapsed the buggy like an umbrella. The first Buggy, created in the converted stables of Maclaren's restored medieval farmhouse, Arnold House, in the village of Barby, Northamptonshire in England weighed just six pounds