History
Advances in producing permanent press fabrics involved a series of agents that crosslink the cellulose-based fibers that comprise most clothing. Initial agents included formaldehyde. Starting in the 1940s a series of urea-formaldehyde derivatives were introduced. Technical issues overcome included yellowing, odor, and the tendency of some agents to accelerate the degradation of fabrics by bleaches. The technology advanced especially rapidly in the early 1990s.
In older washing machines, the permanent press setting sprays moisture during the spin cycle to maintain the moisture content of the permanent press fabrics above a certain specified limit to reduce wrinkling.
Most older clothes dryers feature an automatic permanent press setting, which puts clothes through a cool-down cycle at the end of the normal heated drying cycle. Modern dryers tend to include this as a standard feature.
Read more about this topic: Permanent Press
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)