Before the invention of hair dryers, women would often attach hoses to the exhaust ends of vacuum cleaners to blow-dry their hair.
A woman sits under a chrome-plated hair dryer, 1928. (Keystone-France/Getty Images)
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| c. 1928 (Corbis) |
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| A stylist uses a freestanding dryer to blow dry a client's hair with controlled precision at the Hairdressing Fair of Fashion in London, 1929. (Puttnam /Topical Press Agency/Getty Images) |
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| 1929 (Puttnam /Topical Press Agency/Getty Images) |
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| A woman tries a new hair drying machine at the Hairdressing Fashion Fair in London. Nov. 5, 1930. (Popperfoto/Getty Images) |
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| 1930 (Imagno/Austrian Archives/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) |
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| A woman demonstrates a hair-steaming apparatus at the Hairdressing Exhibition in London, 1930. (Imagno/Austrian Archives/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) |
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| A woman tries out a Supreme Pedestal hairdryer at the Hairdressing Exhibition in London. Sept. 22, 1932. (Miller/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images) |
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| A hair salon in Moscow, Russia, 1933. (Emil Strassberg/Ullstein Bild/Getty Images) |
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| A hair salon in Cannes, France, 1937. (Imagno/Austrian Archives/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) |
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| Marjorie McWeeney dries her hair with her son Mark at a hair dresser in New York, 1947. (Nina Leen/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images) |
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| A woman uses a heat lamp and hairdryer made of hot glass, 1948. (Ralph Royle/Pix Inc./The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images) |
(via Mashable/Retronaut)