Clothes iron
tool or appliance for smoothing cloth using heat and pressure
A clothes iron, also known as a flatiron, smoothing iron, dry iron, steam iron, and simply iron, is a small appliance that, when heated, is used to press clothes to remove wrinkles and unwanted creases. Domestic irons generally range in operating temperature from 121 °C (250 °F) to 182 °C (360 °F). It is named for the metal (iron) of which the device was historically made, and the use of it is generally called ironing, the final step in the process of laundering clothes.
Ironing works by loosening the ties between the long chains of molecules that exist in polymer fiber materials. With the heat and the weight of the ironing plate, the fibers are stretched and the fabric maintains its new shape when cool. Some materials, such as cotton, require the use of water to loosen the intermolecular bonds.
History and development
Before the introduction of electricity, irons were heated by combustion, either in a fire or with some internal arrangement. The iron was made as a solid piece of iron with a handle and was heated, for example, on a wood stove and used to smooth clothes. It can also be called a smoothing iron. An "electric flatiron" was invented by American Henry W. Seely and patented on June 6, 1882.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Clothes iron” is tool or appliance for smoothing cloth using heat and pressure. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Clothes, iron and tool, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q483634. The Library of Congress control number is sh85068243. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1882.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clothes iron” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.