These sadirons were sold in sets of 3, with a single handle. Potts endeared herself to housewives when she patented a sadiron with a detachable handle, thus allowing the iron to be heated without also heating the handle. Potts was granted a patent for a sadiron pointed at both ends, making it handy to iron in both directions. The first significant improvement of the sadiron was achieved by Mary Florence Potts of Ottumwa, Iowa. Sadirons were heavy, usually ranging from 5 to 9 pounds, and the weight contributed as much as the heat to the pressing process. The undesirable aspect of this, however, was that it heated the handle as well, so they had to be held with a potholder or thick glove. These irons were heated in front of an open fire or on a stove. The basic sadiron is a shaped piece of metal, with a polished base and attached metal handle. The sadiron - whose name derives from the Old English word “sald,” meaning solid - first appeared in the 17th century. Since that time, a wide variety of irons have been developed in the attempt to find a solution to the problem of how to heat an iron efficiently - and protect both the user and the cloth against burns. Heated irons did not appear in the West until the 17th century. In the first century BC, the Chinese became the first to apply heat in the process of pressing cloth, using long-handled metal pans filled with charcoal. Tina Brewster Wray, Curator of Collections at the White River Valley Museum: Potts invented a removable wooden handle in 1871 that made it easier to iron–it didn’t burn your hand (women used rags or potholders but still, those things must have been dangerously hot!), and you could put one sadiron on the stove to heat while you moved the handle to the hot one. Webster’s defines sadiron as a flatiron pointed at both ends and having a removable handle, and dates the term to 1738.Įvidently an American woman named Mrs. It says that the word sad once meant heavy or compact. The OED says that the sadiron is a smoothing iron, solid and flat, as opposed to a box iron that is hollow and meant to hold coals (so it didn’t need to be heated and reheated on the stove). There are many others, developed for special uses, like goffering irons that pressed ruffles or specially shaped irons for sleeves. The sadiron (today it is one word) is one type of iron. The Oxford English Dictionary and Webster’s give the word’s origins. The dictionaries should be enough to debunk this myth. A reader wrote: “Does anyone know the reason that irons were called “sad irons” in the 19th century? I’ve heard that ironing was a sad business and any woman who ironed would be sad.”
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