The History of Flatirons
It seems that wrinkles bother us. For at least a thousand years, people have sought ways to smooth out everything from wrinkles in clothing to frizzy hair. The advent of permanent-press materials freed generations of women from the ancient ritual of ironing the family wash, but the "flatiron" lives on, used both to spritz up a traveler's business suit and to straighten curly hair before a hot date.
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Early "Irons"
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"Smoothers" made of glass have been found in the graves of Viking women, who used them to smooth the wrinkles from linen garments. Most fit in the palm of the hand, though later types had handles. People used this sort of glass "iron" as well as flat, smooth stones to remove wrinkles and press pleats right into the 19th century. Some used them along with a type of ironing board known as a smoothing board. In Norway, these were made of beautifully-carved whalebone.
Metal Irons
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Thousand-year-old drawings from China and Korea show women pressing cloth using a metal pan filled with hot coals, so the art of "ironing" was already well established in some parts of the world even before the first "flatiron" was forged by some unknown blacksmith in Europe in the Middle Ages. In Italy, irons were made of soapstone; elsewhere, they were made of terracotta and earthenware as well. They were heated in the fireplace or, after the invention of the stove, on the cook stove or special ironing stoves with slots for several irons and a water jug on top to dampen the cloth.
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Sad Irons
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U.S. President Lyndon Johnson will forever be associated with the "sad irons" of the Texas Hill Country. As a young Congressman in the 1930s, he led the fight to bring electricity to rural farms where women still did chores the old-fashioned way, including the hot, thankless task of ironing with a heavy implement heated on a wood stove. Said Mary Cox, a Texas woman who lived through those times: "Washing was hard work, but ironing was the worst. Nothing could ever be as hard as ironing."
"Sadirons" took their name from "sad," meaning solid. It took at least two to do the job: one in hand and one heating on the stove. They also required close attention to keep from scorching the cloth, and had to be kept scrupulously clean and sandpapered to avoid burning and spotting, then greased against rusting.
Self-Heating Irons
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By the mid-19th century several patents had been issued in the hunt for self-heating irons. Gas-heated irons competed with a U.S. model that burned charcoal. Henry W. Seeley of New York patented the first electric iron in 1882. By the 1920s, enough houses had been wired for electricity to make the electric iron a hot seller in American homes; by the 1930s it was rivaled only by the radio as the most popular home appliance.
Flatirons Today
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A modern "flatiron" is often an electric appliance used to straighten hair without scorching. Today, nearly all irons are of the electric steam type, which heats water internally and can squirt it directly onto the fabric being smoothed to speed up the process.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Flatirons photographed by David Monniaux for Museum of Scotland (GNU license); Woman ironing with sad irons by John Vachon, Library of Congress
