Biographies, professional relationships and the movement of expertise across borders.
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Hairdressing history cannot be explained through inventions alone. It also depends on people: hairdressers, teachers, technicians, manufacturers, travelling demonstrators, publishers and customers. Their professional relationships help explain how new techniques became known and adopted.
A biography should reconstruct where a person worked, with whom they collaborated and how their activities can be documented. Claims of being “first” require particular caution.
Professional knowledge circulated through travel, salons, schools, trade fairs, demonstrations, patents, commercial representatives and specialist publications. These connections are often as historically important as the invention itself.
Research directory
Hairdressing history was shaped by inventors, salon practitioners, educators, manufacturers and publishers. Explore documented technical contributions and the historical evidence behind each profile. A patent is not, by itself, proof of commercial success.
Compare two patented machines → · Explore the Innovation Atlas → · Evidence register →
The history of hairdressing developed through overlapping inventions, salon practices, teaching, manufacturing and trade. These profiles distinguish a documented technical contribution from an unverified claim of priority. A patent documents what was disclosed and claimed; it does not by itself prove manufacture or widespread salon use.
Field: temporary heat-set waving with heated tongs. The Marcel wave is a precursor in styling practice, not itself a chemical permanent wave.
Evidence to pursue: contemporary advertisements, training manuals and dated apparatus descriptions.
Read the existing profile ↓Field: early permanent waving using winding, chemical treatment and applied heat; public demonstration in London in 1906.
Evidence to pursue: dated trade reporting, patents, commercial records and training material.
Explore the Nessler system →Field: patent-documented heating apparatus associated with a flat-wound arrangement. US 1,619,794 was filed 19 March 1925 and granted 1 March 1927.
Primary source: US 1,619,794.
Compare the patents →Field: a patented arrangement for supporting and positioning multiple hair-waving appliances, with attention to operation and protection. US 1,693,515 was granted 27 November 1928.
Primary source: US 1,693,515.
Study machine design →Field: patented developments in permanent-wave apparatus. His historical role should be examined through the precise patent claims rather than broad statements about who invented the permanent wave.
Primary sources: GB 111372 and US 1,266,879.
Early competing systems →Field: commonly associated with the development of the chemical cold-wave process. Exact priority, formulation and commercial chronology require independent documentary verification.
Evidence to pursue: dated patent filings, chemical specifications and contemporary trade coverage.
Explore chemical cold waving →Marjorie Stewart Joyner was an American hairdresser, salon owner, inventor and beauty-industry educator. She trained in Chicago and developed a career connected with the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company and its professional training network.
Joyner graduated from the A. B. Moler Beauty and Culture School in Chicago in 1916. She subsequently developed expertise through the Walker organisation, where she held leadership responsibilities in beauty education. Her career is part of a wider history of Black women’s entrepreneurship, vocational training and professional organisation in the United States.
Joyner filed her application for a Permanent Waving Machine on 16 May 1928; US Patent 1,693,515 was issued on 27 November. The patent names Joyner as inventor and assigns the rights to the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company. Its design incorporates a suspended group of heated curling irons and devices intended to support their weight and protect the scalp.
The Smithsonian preserves curling rods used by Joyner in her Chicago salon, material evidence of her long professional practice. Its exhibition also documents her role in training thousands of Black beauticians. The history of the patent’s commercial distribution, however, should be researched separately.
Sources: US Patent 1,693,515 · Smithsonian: Marjorie Stewart Joyner · Smithsonian collection: permanent rod used by Joyner.
The existing biographical research identifies Marcel Grateau (1852–1936) as the French hairdresser associated with the Marcel wave, a heat-styling method commonly dated to the early 1870s. Accounts of his career connect the technique to Parisian salon culture and the professionalisation of controlled tong waving.
Grateau’s achievement should not be confused with Nessler’s later permanent-wave process. The historical distinction is not merely chronological: it concerns the mechanism, duration and practical use of the treatment. The surviving commercial package pictured here illustrates the subsequent marketing of Marcel-style implements, not necessarily an object made by Grateau himself.
According to the project’s biographical research, Josef Mayer was born on 6 February 1881 in Parabutsch (Parabuć), then in the Kingdom of Hungary. His professional path included Budapest, Vienna and several European cities, followed by a salon career in Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary). The research associates his experiments with flat winding with the winter of 1923–1924.
The patent record provides a firmer technical anchor: US 1,619,794 identifies Josef Mayer of Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia and describes an electrically heated appliance designed for flat strands of hair. The distinction between the biography and the dated patent is important: travel, prizes, teaching credentials and commercial networks require their own corroborating contemporary records.
Primary source: US 1,619,794 (1927). Read the technical analysis.
The Technology & Patents collection now contains a detailed, evidence-labelled catalogue of Nessler, Gallia, Szeemann, Suter, Calvete, Croquignole, Frederics, Mayer and Joyner, alongside the distinct Marcel method. Explore the comparative catalogue →
This subject is part of a larger, interconnected reference project covering the history of hairdressing—not only permanent waving or one inventor.