Summary

The aim of our blog was to present a precise analysis of the Object Hairdryer. We started with the alphabet of a hairdryer and what we associate with it. Further we collected the general information like the construction, how it is build and how it works. We also informed us about the history of the hairdryer.

Moreover we started looking for information in other sectors, like music, theatre and art and we were astonished of the amount of interesting things we found.

This lead us to the conclusion that the hairdryer has become an important Object. The function nowadays is more than just to dry hair and it influence human in a creative way,  for example it was also used as an Object of provocation in politics.

This subject showed us that objects can have different uses and meanings more than their general function and that it could be interesting to take a closer look at them.

An article about German elections in year 2009

From inside Germany: Political vote catching with hairdryers and sharks

What has a hairdryer to do with politics in Europe? Experts could assume that maybe a new law for the quantity of hot air a hairdryer is allowed to emit has been enacted.

After all, European madness of regulation had already created laws concerning the coving of cucumbers and bananas, the standard size of condoms or the package regulation affecting mandatory deposit on disposable packaging.

So why not regulating hot hair?

Pic.: Political vote catching - “Hot air would choose the lefties”

This year is a bumper election year in Germany: Several state parliament elections, local elections and in September Bundestag elections. So how to dispose people going to the polls? The German social democratic party (SPD), which is running Germany together with its larger partner, the conservative party (CDU) of chancellor Angela Merkel, is afraid to loose its re-election in September. And because of necessity is the mother of invention, they started an aggressive and polarizing campaign.

Since last week a hairdryer conveys the party’s message: “Hot air would choose the lefties”. Other election posters show a shark and a coin in collar. The political opponents are not amused. They criticise the “decrial” and “impertinentness” the posters stand for. The SPD-election-manager, Kajo Wasserhövel, defends the viewy campaign: “We get to the point and talk in plain language” he says. “We do not want to make a purring EU-election-campaign”.

The EU-election is a prestige performance. It’s a warm-up for the crucial election in September. One will see how much hairdryers will take place in the German parliament. By all means, some more hot debates would not be amiss. - Paul Schilling | www.FreieHONNEFER.de

Oldest working electric hairdryer

British hairdryer set world record in 2010:
An 80-year-old electric hairdryer, made by a Siemens branch in Britain, is setting the world record for the oldest working electronic hairdryer. It remains in perfect working order and, according to its owner, retired insurance company director John Wilcox, it has never broken down or even needed a service,
The dryer's only controls are on/off and hot/cold. It came with a Bakelite carry-case – now slightly cracked – complete with a vanity mirror.
The brown Bakelite item's only concession to technological advances has been a new plug – and only then because its original round-pin type became obsolete.
Though Siemens is a German firm, according to the engineering history website Grace's Guide, it established Siemens Electric Lamps and Supplies Ltd in Britain in 1931 to manufacture domestic appliances such as this dryer.
Mr Wilcox, 83, from Paignton, Devon, recalls watching his mother Florrie use it at the family home in Birmingham, 70 years ago.

Kay Wilcox shows off the 1930s Bakerlite hairdryer.

 

They progress from an unfettered look in her teens to a more structured cut. 'Having an electric hairdryer in the Thirties was still a luxury for women,' said Mrs Wilcox.

The little prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Chosen book by Rabea

 

                                                         original title: Le Petit Prince

                                                         language: French
                                                         author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

                                                         genre: novella

                                                         first published: 1943 by Reynal & Hitchcock in New York

 

The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince) first published in 1943, is a novella with watercolour illustrations by the french author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

The novella is the most read and the most translated book in the French language, and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France. It is translated into more than 250 languages and dialects and over a million copies per year get saled. It is one of the best-selling books which has ever published. Since its first publication, the novella has been adapted to various media like audio recordings, stage, screen, ballet and operatic works.

In “The Little Prince” a pilot stranded in the desert. He meets a young prince fallen to Earth from a small asteroid. The story is philosophical and includes societal criticism, remarking on the strangeness of the adult world.

 

 

 

 

 

Contemplation by Franz Kafka

Chosen book by Tatewik

Author	Franz Kafka
Original title	Betrachtung
Language	German
Genre	Short stories
Publisher	Rowohlt Verlag
Publication date	1912
Published in English	1958 New York, Schocken Books

Betrachtung (published in English as Meditation or Contemplation) is a collection of eighteen short stories by Franz Kafka written between 1904 and 1912. It was Kafka's first published book, printed at the end of 1912 (with the publication year given as "1913") in the Rowohlt Verlag on an initiative by Kurt Wolff.

Eight of these stories were published before under the title Betrachtungen ("Contemplations") in the bimonthly Hyperion. The collection Description of a Struggle, published in 1958, includes some of the stories In English, in whole or in part. All the stories appear in The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka (1971) and were published in a single volume edition by Twisted Spoon Press, illustrated by Fedele Spadafora. They have also been translated by Malcolm Pasley and are available in the Penguin Books edition, The Transformation and Other Stories (1992).

Hairdryer as a killer

As reported by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in the early 1980′s there was an average of 18 electrocutions each year involving hand-held hair dryers. Most of these deaths occurred when the hair dryer fell, or was pulled, into a bathtub of water.
From 1990 through 1992, there was an average of only four electrocutions a year associated with hair care equipment.
The decrease in hand hair dryer related death occurred as a direct result of the work of the CPSC to improve the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) standards for hair dryers and overall consumer safety.
Death from hair dryers as of 2012 are a rare event due to the work of CPSC to provide complete protection for hand-held hair dryers by requiring all manufacturers incorporate electrocution protection into all related products.

Spacebals Hair Dryer Scene

Hair Dryer Scene from the science fiction parody film by Mel Brooks (1987)