"Left all alone in some punkensh place, like a rusty tin coat hanger hanging in space..."
Dr. Seuss, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? (1973)
Patented more than 200 times in the United States alone, the humble coat hanger has undergone many transformations to reach its modern incarnation.
Various methods of hanging clothes had probably existed before Britain's Queen Victoria was gifted a set of wooden coat hangers for her wedding in 1840, however, the mass-market wire hanger was not invented until 1903. The story goes that Albert Parkhouse, an employee of the Timberlake Wire and Novelty company, a Michigan-based firm that specialized in wire lampshade frames, was irritated by arriving at work one day to find that all the coat hooks were in use. Seizing a piece of wire, he bent it into two large oblong hoops and then twisted both ends at the center into
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