HAVE you ever imagine, without the invention of iron, our clothes will be always wrinkled. Our soldiers or cadets will wear wrinkled uniforms. An iron is an important electric device that helps make our clothes look neat.
Ironing works by loosening the ties between the long chains of molecules that exist in polymer fiber materials. With the heat and the weight of the ironing plate, the fibers are stretched and the fabric maintains its new shape when cool. Before the introduction of electricity, irons were heated by combustion, either in a fire or with some internal arrangement. An “electric flat-iron” was invented by US inventor Henry W. Seeley and patented on June 6, 1882. It weighed almost 15 pounds and took a long time to heat. The early electric irons had no easy way to control their temperature, and the first thermostatically controlled electric iron appeared in the 1920s. Later, steam was
used to iron clothing.
The patent for an electric steam iron and dampener was issued to Max Skolnik of Chicago in 1934. In 1938 Skolnik granted the Steam-O-Matic Corporation of New York to manufacture steam-electric irons. This was the first steam iron to achieve any degree of popularity and led the way to more wide-spread use of the electric steam iron during the 1940s and 1950s.
