Invention Of Electric Iron

The electric iron was invented by New Yorker Henry W. Seely and patented on 6 June 1882. Seely's invention was somewhat ahead of its time, since America's first power station did not begin generating electricity until three months later.

The idea of removing the creases from clothes is centuries old. It began with smoothing tools made of wood glass or marble and the process improved with the addition of heat: heavy stones would be warmed on the hearth and used to press the clothes. The earliest mention of a laundry iron dates from the 17th century - a smooth block of iron with a handle was much better tool than a heavy stone. The first irons were heated next to an open fire, but later developments included hollow irons, which could be filled with embers or charcoal to keep them hot, and by the 19th century it was standard practice to heat the iron on a stovetop.

Henry W. Seely (USA) realized that there was another was to heat the footplate of an iron, by using an electric current. In 1882 he invented the electric iron, which was heated by an arc of electricity bridging the gap between two carbon rods set in the hollow base of the iron. Seely improved on this in 1883 with a much safer, cordless electric iron. This worked on the same principle as modern cordless irons - it was plugged into a special stand to heat up and was then removed from the stand to enable the ironing to be done without the encumbrance of a cable. However, it was expensive and unreliable, which coupled the fact that very few people had an electric supply, meant that it was not a commercial success.
Electric irons gained acceptance as they gradually improved, and then in 1926 New York dry cleaning company Eldec (USA) introduced the first domestic steam iron. Like Seely's pioneering iron before it, the Eldec iron was ahead of its time. Technology had not reached the point where the steam iron could be made safe enough or reliable enough to be an immediate success, but the idea has since proved to be sound, and by the end of the century mote than 80% of electric irons were steam irons.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison