Re: Who invented hair gel

Carson, your very interesting question is really impossible to answer. It all depends, you see, on 
what you would count as "hair gel" and what you would not.

Let's start in prehistoric times, and work forward.

I guess that people, especially those with straight hair, have always had a problem with keeping it 
in place. They have always wanted to keep it in place (1) to keep it out of their eyes and mouths, 
and (2) to look prettier. Damping it down is an obvious, but very temporary solution. Hair tends to 
spring right back out of shape, or fall over your forehead when it dries out after damping down. 
Braiding it is more lasting and effective, but takes a lot of work and trouble. So for convenience a 
"hair gel" sort of alternative has a lot to commend it. Some primitive tribespeople rubbed animal 
fat or coconut oil in their hair. I have seen films where people moving to the American West used 
axle grease -- I do not know how authentic that is. A hundred years ago, vaseline was regarded as 
cleaner and more refined than axle grease, and fifty or sixty years ago that was replaced with "hair 
cream" (e.g. Brylcreem -- ask someone from your grandparents' generation!) Modern hair gels 
have been developed since about the 1960s as more versatile extensions of these sort of products, 
capable of accommodating some really wacky hairstyles -- e.g. spikes and the like.

You may be able to find patents for particular steps in the development of a modern hair gel type 
product. I suspect that in a lot of cases several different companies were working on similar 
products, and did not always even try to take out patents.

Technically, in surface chemical terms, all of the products I have mentioned -- animal fat, coconut 
oil, axle grease, vaseline, hair cream, could be considered to be gels or pastes. They are neither 
solid nor liquid. Gels consist of a liquid that can flow more or less freely through a solid cage-like 
structure. Pastes consist of large amounts of tiny solid particles dispersed in a rather small amount 
of liquid.