Monday, August 8, 2016

Oh, patents! Elisabide's hair curler (bigoudi)

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Elissabide’s hair curler invention, disclosed in FR1398167 was designed for children’s locks!

These curlers comprise a flexible brass wire. The brass wire is coated in plastic, and then cut into strips, the ends of which are capped ornamentally. 

The scope of the invention extends to all sorts of flexible wire and plastic materials for coating, as well as varying sorts of ornamental caps at both ends of the curler.

As for the term "bigoudi", the CNRS - CNRTL etymological research tracks it to the French terms "bigotère - elle" borrowed from the Spanish term "bigote", meaning "moustache" (as early as the 1600s), used in reference to a small cylindrical strip for curling a moustache. The term "bigoudi" also exists during the 19th century in reference to hair curlers, where the metal strip was covered with leather.... 

Below, a modern-day embodiment of Elissabide's 1965 bigoudi! 



Reference
CNRS - CNRTL - Centre National de Recherches Textuelles et Lexicales


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