1929
IMAGE:
PUTTNAM /TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
Hair dryers are a technology
we take for granted -- how could they ever have been anything but the simple
devices they are now? But, much like how the computing power in your laptop
once took entire rooms to contain, the hair dryers of the '30s were massive contraptions that
looked like they were stealing thoughts from your unwilling mind.
1928
A woman sits under a chrome-plated hair dryer.
IMAGE: KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GETTY IMAGES
1933
1937
Before the invention of hair dryers, women and men would often
attach hoses to the exhaust ends of vacuum cleaners to blow-dry their hair.
In 1890, French
stylist Alexandre-Ferdinand Godefroy devised a contraption combining a seat
with a hood connected to a gas stove. A client would sit underneath the hood
while a hand crank blew hot air from the stove over her hair.
Godefroy’s hair hood
dryer was widely copied and iterated upon, and became a staple of hair salons.
Variants included features such as articulable nozzles and heated coils in lieu
of a single helmet.
The first patent for
a handheld hair dryer was granted in 1911. Early portable dryers had a few
problems, though — they were heavy, produced air barely warmer than room
temperature, and had an irritating habit of electrocuting users.
Salon hair dryers
remained the best option until the 1970s, when handheld dryers had advanced in
aesthetics, power and safety enough to be a viable alternative.
A beautician attaches the
tubes and pads of a hair treatment machine to a man's scalp as he reads a
paper. c. 1935
Perhaps the most freakish mad-scientist-looking
beauty device of the 1920s was the permanent waving machine. Designed to give a
woman a head of springy curls. In the late 1930s, the chemical perm was
invented, and soon these cumbersome machines were deemed as outdated and
scrapped.
1928
I think that the most important thing a woman can have — next to talent, of course — is her hairdresser. JOAN CRAWFORD
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