At some point in the early 1920s early vacuum cleaner hoses were used to dry or blow dry hair. This was the origination of the very first electric hair dryers. The vacuum cleaner hose was eventually married to a small mixer motor and the first modern hair dryer was born. In the 1940s Jheri Redding created bonnet or hooded hair dryers still used today. In 1951 Sears introduced a hand-held dryer with a plastic drying bonnet.