Many people spend a half an hour in the morning to dry their hair. This is non-productive time, which must be spent with a hairdryer in one hand. Thus there is need for a portable hair dryer that would dry the hair while the person is able to perform other morning duties. Several such devices have been patented already. The portable hairdryer of Waters (U.S. Pat. No. 3,946,498) is a unit that hangs on the head, and is powered by a long extension cord. The cordless drier of Tomay (U.S. Pat. No. 5,195,253) teaches a handheld blower type dryer with both an electrical and thermal battery. This is also impractical since it requires the full time use of one hand.
The hands-free hair dryer of Sanders (U.S. Pat. No. 5,651,190) teaches a hair bonnet connected by a flexible hose to a battery pack worn on the back. This is not very practical for a number of reasons. The hose would interfere with many activities, and the heavy battery requires a strap to be attached to the body. And lastly, the battery's longevity is very limited. Consider the worst-case example and assume that one needs to have the dryer at 1500 watts for 30 minutes. This equates to a total energy use of 2.7 megajoules. If this was powered by a 12 volt battery this would require a total charge of 225 coulombs. This is equivalent to 62.5 ampere hours (Ah), which is the capacity of a large conventional car battery. Thus the battery-operated devices have not proven practical. Similarly, the portable hair dryer of Stelly (U.S. Pat. No. 5,787,601) with a rechargeable battery pack has not proven practical, presumably because of the extreme weights required for conventional hair-drying.
The portable hair dryer of Bonnema (U.S. Pat. No. 5,857,262) is a gas-powered drier. While this will presumably store enough energy for a full cycle of drying as hydrocarbons are highly efficient energy storage units, this would still require the use of a hand to hold and control the dryer.
The hands-free dryer of Lee et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,940,980) is essentially a conventional hand-held drier attached to a gooseneck tubing, which is attached to a large clip for attachment to convenient furniture or fixtures. This again is not very practical as it requires a largely fixed position of the head with respect to the dryer.
Finally, the portable dryer of Porter (U.S. Pat. No. 6,058,944) teaches a bonnet and hose with a purse style hydrocarbon heater feeding the hot, dry air to the hose. This has some of the same limitations as some of the early devices in that it would require the carrying of the heater unit and the hose would be interfering with natural movements. In addition, the propane reservoir in the purse unit would have to be recharged on a regular basis.
Thus, in spite of the demonstrated need for a truly portable hair dryer no practical unit has been brought to the market.
Devices similar to the present invention are disclosed in application Ser. No. 11/150,938 filed Jun. 13, 2005, entitled “Ambulatory Hairdryer” and U.S. Pat. No. 6,964,116, filed Dec. 2, 2002, entitled “Ambulatory Hairdryer”, the disclosures of each being incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
The art referred to and/or described above is not intended to constitute an admission that any patent, publication or other information referred to herein is “prior art” with respect to this invention. In addition, this section should not be construed to mean that a search has been made or that no other pertinent information as defined in 37 C.F.R. §1.56(a) exists.
All U.S. patents and applications and all other published documents mentioned anywhere in this application are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Without limiting the scope of the invention, a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. §1.72.
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