Coat hanger

A coat hanger is a device mimicing the shape of human shoulders, designed to facilitate the hanging of a coat, jacket, or shirt in a manner that prevents wrinkles.

There are two basic types of coat hangers, the wire hanger, a simple loop of wire in a flattened triangle shape, with the wire continuing into a hook at the top, and the wooden hanger, a flat piece of wood cut into a boomerang-like shape, and with the edges sanded down to prevent damage to the clothing, with a hook, usually of metal, protruding from the point. Some wooden hangers have a rounded bar from tip to tip, forming a flattened triangle, this bar is designed to hang the pants belonging to the jacket. There are also plastic coat hangers, which mostly mimic the shape of either a wire or wooden hanger.

The wire coat hanger was inspired by a coat hook invented in 1869, by O. A. North of New Britain, Connecticut. In 1903, Albert J. Parkhouse, of the Timberlake Wire and Novelty Company in Jackson, Michigan, invented the basic wire coat hanger as a response to coworkers' complaints of too few coat hooks. In 1932, Schuyler C. Hulett patented an improved design, which used cardboard tubes mounted on the upper and lower parts of the hanger to prevent wrinkles, and in 1935, Elmer D. Rogers created the hanger with a tube on the lower bar, to hang pants.

The wooden hanger, on the other hand, was invented by Thomas Jefferson.

Coat hangers are infamous as the symbol of illegal abortion, for which straightened wire coat hangers were often used as a tool. Wire coat hangers also featured in a central scene in the 1981 Joan Crawford biopic[?] Mommie Dearest[?], in which Joan Crawford, played by Faye Dunaway, punishes her daughter for using wire coat hangers, on the grounds that they damage clothing.