,
Philippines Museum). , Australia). The shape was used by Victorian antiquarians to describe a style of medieval
shield, termed by analogy
heater shield. Before the introduction of electricity, irons were heated by combustion, either in a fire or with some internal arrangement. The iron was made as a solid piece of iron with a handle and was heated, for example, on a wood stove and used to smooth clothes. It can also be called a smoothing iron. An "electric flatiron" was invented by American Henry W. Seely and patented on June 6, 1882. It weighed almost and took a long time to heat. The UK
Electricity Association is reported to have said that an electric iron with a carbon arc appeared in France in 1880, but this is considered doubtful. Two of the oldest sorts of iron were either containers filled with a burning substance, or solid lumps of metal which could be heated directly. Metal pans filled with hot coals were used for smoothing fabrics in China in the 1st century BC.) began to be used. They were thick slabs of
cast iron, triangular and with a handle, heated in a fire or on a stove. These were also called flat irons. A laundry worker would employ a cluster of solid irons that were heated from a single source: As the iron currently in use cooled down, it could be quickly replaced by a hot one. In the industrialized world, these designs have been superseded by the electric iron, which uses
resistive heating from an
electric current. The hot plate, called the
sole plate, is made of
aluminium or
stainless steel polished to be as smooth as possible; it is sometimes coated with a low-friction heat-resistant plastic to reduce friction below that of the metal plate. The heating element is controlled by a
thermostat that switches the current on and off to maintain the selected temperature. The invention of the resistively heated electric iron is credited to Henry W. Seeley of New York City in 1882. In the same year an iron heated by a carbon arc was introduced in France, but was too dangerous to be successful. The early electric irons had no easy way to control their temperature, and the first thermostatically controlled electric iron appeared in the 1920s. The first commercially available electric steam iron was introduced in 1926 by a New York drying and cleaning company, Eldec, but was not a commercial success. 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 the exclusive right to manufacture steam-electric irons. This was the first steam iron to achieve any degree of popularity, and led the way to more widespread use of the electric steam iron during the 1940s and 1950s.
Types and names Historically, irons have had several variations and have thus been called by many names: •
Flatiron (American English), flat iron (British English) or smoothing iron : The general name for a hand-held iron consisting simply of a handle and a solid, flat, metal base, and named for the flat ironing face used to smooth clothes. •
Sad iron or sadiron gusing iron''' == Hygiene ==