Iron Curtain

While straight-haired dames were tying their tresses into knots, girls with curls were frantically trying to flatten their manes. Some believe it was Scottish heiress Lady Jennifer Bell Schofield who masterminded a device for straightening her hair in 1912, though it seems Isaac K. Shero beat her to it by three years. Before both of them, however, came Ada Harris, a teacher from Indianapolis who filed a patent application for a flat iron in 1893. Straighteners are commonplace now, but for a long time women improvised and used a clothes iron to achieve crease-free hair.