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Hot comb


A hot comb (also known as a straightening comb) is a metal comb that is used to straighten women's hair and create a smoother hair texture. A hot comb is heated and used to straighten the hair from the roots. It can be placed directly on the source of heat or it may be electrically heated.

The hot comb was an invention developed in France as a way for women with coarse curly hair to achieve a fine straight look traditionally modeled by historical Egyptian women.

Parisian Francois Marcel Grateau is said to have revolutionized hair styling when he invented and introduced heated irons to curl and wave his customers' hair in France in 1872. His Marcel Wave remained fashionable for many decades. Britain's Science and Society Library credits L. Pelleray of Paris with manufacturing the heated irons in the 1870s. An example of an 1890s version of Pelleray's curling iron is housed at the Chudnow Museum in Milwaukee.

Elroy J. Duncan is believed to have invented and manufactured the first hot comb or heated metal straightening comb in America. Sometimes the device is called a "pressing comb." During the late 19th century, Dr. Scott's Electric Curler was advertised in several publications including the 1886 Bloomingdale's catalog and in the June 1889 issue of Lippincott's Magazine Marketed to men to groom beards and moustaches, the rosewood-handled device also promised women the ability to imitate the "loose and fluffy" hairstyles of actress Lillie Langtry and opera singer Adelina Patti, popular white entertainers of the era.

Mme. Baum's Hair Emporium, a store on Eighth Avenue in New York with a large black female clientele, advertised Mme. Baum's "entirely new and improved" straightening comb in 1912. In May and June 1914, other Mme. Baum advertisements claimed that she now had a "shampoo dryer and hair straightening comb," said to have been patented on April 1, 1914. U.S. Patent 1,096,666 for a heated "hair drying" comb -- but not a hair straightening comb --is credited to Emilia Baum and was granted on May 12, 1914.

In May 1915, the Humania Hair Company of New York marketed a "straightening comb made of solid brass" for 89 cents. That same month, Wolf Brothers of Indianapolis advertised its hair straightening comb and alcohol heater comb for $1.00. The La Creole Company of Louisville claimed to have invented a self-heating comb that required no external flame. In September 1915, J. E. Laing, owner of Laing's Hair Dressing Parlor in Kansas City, Kansas claimed to have invented the "king of all straighteners" with a 3/4 inch wide, 9 1/2 inches long comb that also had a reversible handle to accommodate use with either the left or right hand. Indol Laboratories, owned by Bernia Austin in Harlem, offered a steel magnetic comb for $5.00 in November 1916.


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