"In most Iowa homes this third day of the week [Tuesday] is reserved for ironing."
The Iowa Housewife, 1880
Devices for getting wrinkles out of fabric have been around nearly as long as fabric itself. The Vikings used whalebone smoothing boards, the Chinese filled metal pots with hot coals to press cloth, and, in seventeenth-century England, the screw press was popular. By the nineteenth century, most metal smoothers (irons) had adopted their familiar shape, but ironing boards had not evolved at the same rate as fashion design and ironing was often carried out on tables or boards resting across two chairs. Sleeves, pant legs, ruffles, pleats, pockets, buttons, curved seams—the more details were added to clothes, the more difficult it was to remove the wrinkles after laundering. To help improve matters, inventors turned their attention from irons to ironing boards. The first U.S. patent for an "ironing table" was granted in 1858 to W. Vandenburg and J. Harvey. By the end of the century hundreds had been issued.
One inventor, Sarah Mort of Dayton, Ohio, got ironing off tables and out-of-sight by designing a folding ironing board. "When extended it can be placed anywhere, and when not in use can be folded to the capacity of an ordinary board, which renders it very convenient," explained Mort in her patent application. Although the new board was practical and easily hidden, ironing itself remained a chore.
