Sanders Permanent Wave Machine

c. 1930s. Gift of Joanne Davidson. The Sanders Permanent Wave Machine on view at the Museum was used by Bessie Summerville up into the 1960s in her Bessie’s Beauty Shop at 106 North Broad Street (between North Avenue and West Avenue A) in Lampasas. Bessie Summerville (1896-1970) attended cosmetology school in Abilene and then opened her own beauty shop in her Broad Street home in Lampasas. She never married.  The permanent wave machine was invented by an African-American American hairdresser named Marjorie Joyner (1896-1994) to straighten very curly hair and curl very straight hair. She registered the patent in 1927. (U.S. pat. #1,693,515) The machine used electric current to heat the hair that was clamped in sections on rods. She got the idea for rods from a pot roast cooker. Marjorie Joyner was the first African American woman to receive a patent and was the director of Chicago's Madam C. J. Walker Beauty Schools. Unfortunately, Marjorie Joyner never profited from the permanent wave machine because her boss, Madam Walker, owned the rights.