Describe the historical development of the chosen technology.

An iron, also called a clothes iron or flatiron is a small household appliance. It’s a flat, with a triangular surface that when is heated, is used to press clothes to remove creases.

It is said that the Chinese were using hot metal for ironing before anyone else was. Before, pans were filled with hot coals which were pressed over stretched cloth.

Image of the Chinese ladies using hot metal.

It was about a thousand years ago that this method was well-established.

In Northern Europe, they were using stones, glass and wood for smoothing. These continued in use for "ironing" in some places into the mid-19th century, long after Western blacksmiths started to forge smoothing irons in the late Middle Ages.

The first electric clothes iron that was invented was in 1882 in France. The inventor was named Henry W. Seely who lived in New York. Other electric irons were invented in 1882 but however it used a carbon arc to heat the iron which was a method that was dangerous.

Historically, irons have had several different variations and have therefore have had different names along with it.

Flatiron or smoothing iron

The general name for a hand-held iron which consists of a handle and a solid, flat, metal base.

Sad iron or sadiron

This means "solid" or heavy iron, where the base is a solid block of metal which is sometimes used to refer irons with heavier bases than a typical "flatiron".

Box iron, ironing box, charcoal iron, ox-tongue iron or slug iron

The base is a container which you can insert hot coals or a metal brick to keep the iron heated. The ox-tongue iron is named for the particular shape of the insert, referred to as an ox-tongue slug.

Gusing iron

A type of flat iron or sad iron named for the goose-like curve in its neck.

Goffering iron

This type of iron, now obsolete, consists of a metal cylinder oriented horizontally on a stand.

In the 1^st century BC, Metal pans filled with hot coals were used for smoothing fabrics in China. From the 17th century, sadirons or sad irons (from an old word meaning solid) began to be used. They were a thick slab of cast iron which was delta-shaped with a handle, heated in a fire. These were also called flat irons.

Later on, a design consisted of an iron box which could be filled with hot coals.

In India, burning coconut shells were used instead of charcoal since they have a similar heating capacity. This method is still used but only as a backup device since power outages are frequent. Other box irons had heated metal inserts instead of hot coals.

In the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, there were many irons which were heated by fuels such as kerosene, ethanol, whale oil, natural gas, carbide gas or gasoline. Some houses were equipped with a system of pipes for distributing natural gas or carbide gas to different rooms so it was able to operate appliances such as irons. 

The first controlled electric iron appeared in the 1920s. Later on, steam was used to iron clothing as well. Thomas Sears was the one who created steam as a way of ironing. 

The first vailable electric steam iron was introduced in 1926 by a drying & cleaning company in New York but was unfortunately not a success. However, there was a The $10 Steam-O-Matic in 1938 which was the first steam iron to achieve popularity which then led the way to a more widespread use of the electric steam iron during the 1940s and 1950s.