Gugue
70's Braun orange hair dryers
Hair dryers and orange color is the perfect match, specially if it were from Braun!
From upper left:
Braun Super Brushing RS
Braun Astronette HLH
Bottom left:
Braun Rapido PM1000 (Gillette Promax)
Braun Styler Set HLD5
Braun Pistol Grip HLD550
With these dryers Braun created a watershed in the hair dryers development.
Before it, ever since hair dryers exists they used to be very unfriendly, heavy dangerous and inefficient. Most of them made of molded sheet metal with a pan handle. The little ones made of bakelite were safer, but bakelite doesn't endure impacts and just one fall to break it, exposing energized components or the fan blades...
In the 60's the popularization of new plastics like melamine, nylon, PMMA and ABS provided some gain in style and strength for impacts, anyway the state of art of electric motors didn't help, inefficient inductive (brushless) motors used to be silent, however, without torque enough to impel an usable airflow, and universal type motors used to be very noisy and expel sparks and soot from the graphite electrodes beyond the fact they weren't compact enough to provide a small and portable hair dryer yet. The best dryer in the 50's were the "Oster Super Jet / Spam-Jet", with its torpedo shape, its universal motor has a size of a peanut butter glass and aprox. 3 lb / 1,5kg.
So the latest dryers made in the 60's used to have two main appearances, or they were big, heavy, noisy, and efficient or they were small, lightweight and inefficient. To compensate the inefficiency of the inductive motor fan, engineers and designers used to make them very, very hot, some of these dryers used to get deformed by the high heating, sometimes the coil heater even glows by the high power... The roasty breeze dehydrates the hair, opening its flakes and creating static, that's why at that time everybody used to have a fluffy hair.
Unlike the handheld hair dryers, the hood / bonnet types were more succeeded since it demands low heating capacity and soft air flow to work, the popular hair styles also helped the popularization of that model of hair dryers, which were made by many Companies since 60’s to the very end of 70’s.
However in the middle of 60’s some companies like Mabuchi, Johnson developed efficient universal motors extremely compact (about 22mm x 25mm) with insignificant weight , the popular "CC micromotors", which provided more freedom for designers and engineers to create smaller hair dryers with good performance.
One of the first hair dryers to take advantage of micromotors is the Braun HLD2 / HLD231 released in the middle of 60’s. With a size of a diary book and a tangential sirocco fan blade, Reinhold Weiss created a very compact and lightweight device. (I gonna post pictures of it forward). It was a best seller and spread the name Braun together with the words "good taste", "good design" and "nice hair dryer" though.
The internal configuration of the HLD2 was the state of art for compact hair dryers and numerous Companies developed similar models under the same base along the following years. Ronson “Rio”, AEG “TL”, Schick FreeStyle and Sunbeam “Easy Breeze” are some examples of devices with good design style.
Along the 70's, beyond the sirocco type, other configuration of hair dryers also taken advantage of micromotors, like the classical radial and axial fan types; Dieter Rams, Jurgen Greubel, Reinhold Weiss and Heinz Ulrich created a range of gorgeus hair dryers with good performance, some of them in the picture above, like the ubiquitous Braun HLD5 released in 1972 under the same configuration of the Schick “Air Styler”, Sunbeam “Power Breeze” (both from 1970), however with soft lines and far less decorative accents.
The new generation of high-speed micromotors provided a new generation of dryers with stronger air flow. It allowed hair dryers with powerful heating capacity and strong air flow without damages in its external hood. A good example is the Gillette Promax / Braun Rapido from 1975 with the most sleek and functional style above any other device and the fantastic interpretation of a classical "blow dryer" from 50's, the Braun “Pistol Grip” designed by Heinz Ulrich and released in 1976 to replace the previous HLD6 from 1973, designed by Weiss. The functional volute shape from the pioneer dryers, with radial fan that takes air from lateral vents to a long tube gained a clean and simple design far from its precursors, the shortened nose keep it compact even being a blow dryer and the hollow handle to storage the electric cord complete its elegant functionality.
Braun didn't invented the compact and efficient hair dryers, but its designers proved that it's possible to create a big variety of style for the same product using the "less is more" rule. The beauty is just a consequence of a work well done and makes them pieces of art.
70's Braun orange hair dryers
Hair dryers and orange color is the perfect match, specially if it were from Braun!
From upper left:
Braun Super Brushing RS
Braun Astronette HLH
Bottom left:
Braun Rapido PM1000 (Gillette Promax)
Braun Styler Set HLD5
Braun Pistol Grip HLD550
With these dryers Braun created a watershed in the hair dryers development.
Before it, ever since hair dryers exists they used to be very unfriendly, heavy dangerous and inefficient. Most of them made of molded sheet metal with a pan handle. The little ones made of bakelite were safer, but bakelite doesn't endure impacts and just one fall to break it, exposing energized components or the fan blades...
In the 60's the popularization of new plastics like melamine, nylon, PMMA and ABS provided some gain in style and strength for impacts, anyway the state of art of electric motors didn't help, inefficient inductive (brushless) motors used to be silent, however, without torque enough to impel an usable airflow, and universal type motors used to be very noisy and expel sparks and soot from the graphite electrodes beyond the fact they weren't compact enough to provide a small and portable hair dryer yet. The best dryer in the 50's were the "Oster Super Jet / Spam-Jet", with its torpedo shape, its universal motor has a size of a peanut butter glass and aprox. 3 lb / 1,5kg.
So the latest dryers made in the 60's used to have two main appearances, or they were big, heavy, noisy, and efficient or they were small, lightweight and inefficient. To compensate the inefficiency of the inductive motor fan, engineers and designers used to make them very, very hot, some of these dryers used to get deformed by the high heating, sometimes the coil heater even glows by the high power... The roasty breeze dehydrates the hair, opening its flakes and creating static, that's why at that time everybody used to have a fluffy hair.
Unlike the handheld hair dryers, the hood / bonnet types were more succeeded since it demands low heating capacity and soft air flow to work, the popular hair styles also helped the popularization of that model of hair dryers, which were made by many Companies since 60’s to the very end of 70’s.
However in the middle of 60’s some companies like Mabuchi, Johnson developed efficient universal motors extremely compact (about 22mm x 25mm) with insignificant weight , the popular "CC micromotors", which provided more freedom for designers and engineers to create smaller hair dryers with good performance.
One of the first hair dryers to take advantage of micromotors is the Braun HLD2 / HLD231 released in the middle of 60’s. With a size of a diary book and a tangential sirocco fan blade, Reinhold Weiss created a very compact and lightweight device. (I gonna post pictures of it forward). It was a best seller and spread the name Braun together with the words "good taste", "good design" and "nice hair dryer" though.
The internal configuration of the HLD2 was the state of art for compact hair dryers and numerous Companies developed similar models under the same base along the following years. Ronson “Rio”, AEG “TL”, Schick FreeStyle and Sunbeam “Easy Breeze” are some examples of devices with good design style.
Along the 70's, beyond the sirocco type, other configuration of hair dryers also taken advantage of micromotors, like the classical radial and axial fan types; Dieter Rams, Jurgen Greubel, Reinhold Weiss and Heinz Ulrich created a range of gorgeus hair dryers with good performance, some of them in the picture above, like the ubiquitous Braun HLD5 released in 1972 under the same configuration of the Schick “Air Styler”, Sunbeam “Power Breeze” (both from 1970), however with soft lines and far less decorative accents.
The new generation of high-speed micromotors provided a new generation of dryers with stronger air flow. It allowed hair dryers with powerful heating capacity and strong air flow without damages in its external hood. A good example is the Gillette Promax / Braun Rapido from 1975 with the most sleek and functional style above any other device and the fantastic interpretation of a classical "blow dryer" from 50's, the Braun “Pistol Grip” designed by Heinz Ulrich and released in 1976 to replace the previous HLD6 from 1973, designed by Weiss. The functional volute shape from the pioneer dryers, with radial fan that takes air from lateral vents to a long tube gained a clean and simple design far from its precursors, the shortened nose keep it compact even being a blow dryer and the hollow handle to storage the electric cord complete its elegant functionality.
Braun didn't invented the compact and efficient hair dryers, but its designers proved that it's possible to create a big variety of style for the same product using the "less is more" rule. The beauty is just a consequence of a work well done and makes them pieces of art.