Who Made That Hair Dryer? DeBrocke/ClassicStock/Corbis In 1888, Alexandre-Ferdinand Godefroy, a French coiffeur inventeur - that's hairstylist inventor - patented the hair dryer's earliest ancestor. The contraption was to be hooked up "to any suitable form of heater," which would send hot air through a pipe to a dome surrounding the woman's head. The device was impressively multipurpose: to use it for shampooing, Godefroy suggested removing all pieces except one resembling the brim of a sombrero, which fastened around a woman's head to redirect suds into the sink. "Still another use to which the device may be applied," Godefroy wrote, "is that of shaping wig-holders." Godefroy's invention included an escape valve for steam so women's heads wouldn't cook. But the machine, and the gas hair dryers that followed, lacked the second element of modern blow dryers: airflow. In fact, in the early 20th century, ads and inventors urged women to attach a hair-drying hose to their vacuum cleaners" exhaust, selling not only dry locks but also supreme efficiency. One 1926 patent offered a brush that could connect "to a suitable suction apparatus or blower whereby the dust and dirt may be carried off as the said brush is being used." At the same time, inventors began combining heat-generating motors and fans into hand-held electric hair dryers that bear a strong resemblance to ours today, though they were heavier and carried the risk of bathtub electrocution. But the hair dryer didn't seriously take off until the 1920s, which happened to be about the same time that utility companies began sending out salesmen with irons and toasters and hot plates, trying to push daytime consumer appliances to even out residential electrical use, which was heavier in the evenings. It was also around the time the bob came into vogue. "What you used to do is you would sit in front of a heat source or outside in the sun and comb or brush your hair until it was dry," says Rachel Maines, a visiting scholar at Cornell University who studies the history of technology. If you had long hair, you would wash it once a week, if you did it that often. But the bob required frequent washing and, more important, styling. Having clean, shiny, fluffy hair - that's a 20th-century thing. Helen Powell, of the Britain-based Web site Obsessionistas, collects vintage hair dryers. When did you start collecting? Around five years ago. A friend of mine was clearing out her mum's attic and told me about a couple of old hair dryers she'd come across. Do you use any of them? Many of them predate current electrical safety standards, so it probably wouldn't be a good idea. Is there one with particular sentimental value? I grew up in the 1970s and remember my mum owning a Braun Styler - very orange and very "70s - that came with various attachments designed to enable you to create Farrah Fawcett-style flicks and waves, so when I came across one of these some years ago, I was keen to add it to my collection. Which is your favorite? My favorite is probably a 1920s Sol German hair dryer. Although it was designed nearly a century ago, it isn't hugely different from many of the designs available today. The basic hold-and-point pistol design has, with just a few exceptions, remained the same for almost a hundred years.