Tours Travel

The Curling Wand: A Detailed History

Posted by admin

The curling iron or curling iron is one of the most used devices for a comfortable hairstyle at home. While today’s generation might believe that most of these tools and appliances are modern inventions, in reality; they are simply modifications made to devices that debuted centuries ago.

In fact, for many centuries, both men and women have been known to be obsessed with curly hair. In fact, it was a common habit for men to use fire-heated tongs to curl the hair on their heads and beards! These methods were unrefined and many times, such crude techniques ended up burning and damaging the hair.

The history of the curling wand dates back to the year 1866 when an American-born British citizen named Hiram Maxim first obtained a patent for the device. Also, in the early 1900s, two Frenchmen, Maurice Lentheric and Marcel Grateau, were the first to use the concept of applying heated tongs to curl hair. Hair curled in this manner also became known as Marcel curls or waves. The device invented by Grateau was called Marcel’s tongs.

The advantage of the Marcel curling iron over its predecessors was that it gave longer lasting and deeper curls. Whether the Marcel iron was a modification of Maxim’s device or an original creation is lost to history; so it cannot be said for sure who the inventor of the curling wand is.

In 1906, a German hairdresser named Charles L. Nessler used borax paste and hot irons to curl hair with eight-hour-long procedures. This was improved upon in 1914 by Eugene Sutter who used 20 heaters to greatly reduce this curling time.

In 1920, a Parisian beautician, Rambaud, claimed to have perfected a system for curling hair, but a more significant invention came in 1945, when a French chemist named Eugene Schueller of L’Oreal Laboratories used rods of different diameters to control the depth and amount of hair. curls By 1960, L’Oreal had also developed its polymer hairspray to hold curls in place.

Additionally, Sarah Breedlove Walker, an African-American woman from Indianapolis, Indiana, claimed to have created and perfected a method of straightening hair with hot combs that was loosely based on hair curling devices available in the past.

The modern electric curling iron can even be attributed to René Lelievre and Roger Lemoine who, in 1959, used electricity to heat the barrels of curling irons.

Therefore, it is evident that many people have put effort into creating a hair curling device. The modern curling iron can be considered a product of all these efforts. The history of the device may be vague and ambiguous, but one thing is clear: the modern curling iron has come a long way from the original methods of curling hair.

Leave A Comment