Who Invented The Hairdryer?
The hairdryer is a very common element in the lives of all of us. In recent years, important advances have been made in terms of its technology, such as ionic technology, which breaks down the water molecules in damp hair to prevent frizz.
The History Of The Hairdryer
The dryer was born in the 19th century in a Paris beauty salon at the hands of Alexander Godefroy. Now, it was not a dryer as we know it today, but a heat sucker. And it was the result of chance. He placed a lady with wet hair under the hood of the gas stove to see what would happen. As expected, it sucked up the moisture and dried the lady's hair.However, there are those who do not consider the French hairdresser the inventor of the dryer for a very simple reason. The method that he used in his beauty salon was just the opposite of the dryer we know today: what the gas stove hood did was absorb air, while the dryer expels hot air.
Over the years different tests were carried out, and at the end of the 19th century, it was concluded that a dryer would be much more efficient if it had a motor to absorb the air, a tube that transported the air from the absorption zone up to the expulsion and an element that heated the absorbed air.
Furniture dryers were invented that had magazine racks, footrests, armrests... All kinds of comforts. Before World War I, first-hand dryers appeared on the market, although they were very useless devices. They were made of metal, so they were heavy and made a deafening noise.
It was in the 1950s when the hood dryer appeared, much more powerful and reliable than the first-hand dryer. Finally, in the 1970s, guidelines were developed for manufacturers to improve the safety conditions of their products.
Now that we are talking about the history of this great artifact, let me tell you who invented the washing machine and why?
Who invented the washing machine? The invention of this device plays an important role in the emancipation of women, precisely because it has freed mothers and daughters from a terribly exhausting task. Before the washing machine existed, it was common practice to wash clothes by hand in rivers and streams, using stones as a base and sand as an abrasive. And I am not referring to Ancient Rome, yes. This method of washing was still in vogue at the end of the 18th century when the first prototype of this appliance was developed. A brilliant intuition, which we owe to a theologian.
Who Invented The Washing Machine?
The first washing machine seems to be dated 1767 and as I have advanced, it was created by a theologian (ie a religious scholar) from Regensburg, Germany.The inventor, Jacob Christian Schäffern, had built a device using a rudimentary manual centrifuge. The centrifuge is a device that, when spinning, separates the solids from the liquids (in this case the clothes from the water that washes them) thanks to the action of centrifugal force. According to others, it seems that the prototype of this machine dates from a century earlier, in 1677. John Hoskins, an English nobleman, is said to have created a system for washing clothes using a woven rope basket that was rotated by hand under running water.
Towards The Modern Washing Machine
The closest washing machine to the modern one is considered to be the machine built-in in 1860 by the Englishman Thomas Bradford.This "proto-washing machine", that is, a prehistoric washing machine, had an octagonal wooden cage (a kind of basket), inserted in a larger box, also made of wood, filled with soapy water. To operate everything, a crank was used that rotated the smaller box in the water. The following year, a roller wringer was added to this contraption.
According to other historians, however, the title of inventor of the washing machine would not go to Bradford but to the American William Blackstone, a merchant who cared especially for his wife's housework.
In fact, in 1874 he gave his wife, for her birthday, a wooden barrel to fill with hot soapy water. Inside the barrel was a pin with pegs, which, turning, moved the clothes and washed them. Also in this case the washing machine worked manually.
The First Electric Washing Machine
As a good businessman, Blackstone immediately smelled the commercial goodness of his invention and put it on the market, becoming, in a few years, the first manufacturer of washing machines. From that moment on, improvements were made to the washing machine, such as the important one that at the beginning of the 20th century changed the wooden tubs for metal.However, the real washing machine revolution came in 1906 when Alva Fisher built the first electric washing machine. An idea that eliminated the effort of manually operating that machine full of rags and water.
Fisher's washing machine, however, had a not insignificant flaw: the electric motor was not well insulated from the drum and was often splashed with water, causing short circuits and very dangerous electric shocks for anyone who touched the appliance.
Fortunately, a few years later Joe Barlow and John Seeling, founders of "Barlow & Seeling Manufacturing," later to become Speed ​​Queen, one of the pioneers in the industry, made some basic improvements to Fisher's prototype: multi-directional movement, the waterproof electric motor (to avoid dangerous shorts for housewives) and the integrated two-speed rotation function. And when the machine was perfected, it also began to leave the American market, invading the European one as well.
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