W know little about how stone-age people cared for their garments of vegetable fiber or animal skin. They must have had ways of maintaining suppleness and preventing decay, but they presumably cared little for smoothness.
 
Early methods
 
By Roman times, however, the woolen toga (forbidden to noncitizens) was de rigueur outside the home, and the upper classes demanded that it be wrinkle-free. Having no ironing equipment as we know it, the Romans clamped the folded togas in powerful screw-presses.
 
The smoothing process eventually was enhanced by the invention of the heated ...