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Along Life’s Way
A Pressing
Matter/A Special Woman
By Lois E. Wilson
Reading through a journal I kept in 1964, I was amazed at how many days
I had entered, “did ironing.” In my teen years, like most of us, I
ironed on an ironing board with an electric iron which had heat
settings for various fabrics. We also had a Sears mangle iron in our
kitchen. You sat in front of it and fed flat items through it to remove
their wrinkles.
Now I rarely pull down my wall-based ironing board to press anything. I
wondered how we had advanced to the stage of freedom from the iron we
currently enjoy.
Before the shape of the iron we know today, there were poles that held
heated pans to press against clothing items resting on stones or wood
tables on the floor. Other shapes also evolved. In the late
Middle ages, blacksmiths forged flat irons. They weighed around six
pounds and took some time to heat; therefore, often more than one iron
was used at a time to speed up the process. They required polishing to
keep them efficient. One had to protect hands from burns and check the
temperature of the irons with water drops or by holding them near one’s
face. This was to prevent scorching of fabrics. Chamber or box irons
held coals in them which could stain items from their smoke or ashes.
In the 1930’s and 40’s synthetic fabrics were developed. This made
housewives happy as nylon and polyester didn’t require pressing. Their
convenience was enticing consumers away from cotton clothing and
household linens. Cotton farmers were experiencing a decline in the use
of their product. Along came a heroine to help those doing laundry
chores and the farmers too. It was Ruth Benerito.
She had undergraduate chemistry degrees from Tulane University and a
Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Chicago. She taught
and had a long career at the US Department of Agriculture Southern
Research Center. Her team developed the process of treating cotton
fibers so that the chainlike cellulose molecules were strengthened to
stick to each other via hydrogen bonds. It was a “cross linking” that
made cotton wrinkle resistant. Further research enabled her team to add
other properties such as stain and flame resistance to the fibers.
Ruth Benerito retired from the USDA in 1986; she continued teaching
until 1997. At age 86 she received the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime
Achievement Award for her work on textiles. In 2008 she was inducted
into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. She died in 2013—but her
“wash and wear” legacy still lives. I’m sure there are many of us who
would award her accolades for the hours and days of freedom from the
iron she and her team have given us over the years. She deserves to be
recognized during this Woman’s History Month.“Thank you, Ruth!”
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