So Minnesota: The Deubener shopping bag

An invention created in St. Paul more than a century ago is now used in stores around the world.

In the early 1900s, Walter Deubener and his wife Lydia owned a grocery store on the corner of Cedar and Seventh streets. After seeing his customers were having a tough time carrying groceries home, Deubener went to the drawing board. After months of tinkering, he got the idea of using a cord to form handles and wrapping the cord beneath the bag to carry extra weight.

"As the story goes, as soon as he could create a bag that could carry 50 pounds of weight, he knew he had something," B Kyle, with the Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce said.

The patent was granted in 1919, and the Deubner shopping bag would make the couple extremely wealthy.

"He was selling a million bags for five cents," Kyle said. "Ten years later, he was selling ten million bags, so he absolutely revolutionized the shopping industry."