Karl Nessler

Charles Nessler (born Karl Ludwig Neßler; 2 May 1872 – 22 January 1951) was the inventor of the permanent wave.

He was the son of Rosina (née Laitner) and Bartholomäus Nessler, a cobbler in Todtnau, a small town located high in the Black Forest, just beneath the Feldberg.

As a youngster, he occasionally worked as a shepherd and observed that wool, in contrast to human hair, is constantly crimped.

The curling effect was finally successful on Nessler's third attempt, when he washed out the hair rollers for a long time.

[2] Though the perm was an immediate success in London, it was not well received at a demonstration for leading hairdressers held on October 8, 1906, perhaps because Nessler's English colleagues resented his competition for their regular customers.

In 1928, he sold his hair salon chain, production facilities, and distribution network to the Nestlé-Le Mur Company, investing the proceeds in the stock market.

In the same year, he put his name on a volume, The Story of Hair (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1928), which is believed to have been ghost-written by Zelda Popkin, a journalist and novelist of the period.

[8] On 22 January 1951, Karl Nessler died at the age of 78 of a heart attack at his home in Harrington Park, New Jersey.

Previous winners have been Alfred Preussner of Gevelsberg (1996), Erwin Schmidt of Bretten (1999), Manfred Schmock of Darmstadt (2002), Siegfried Helias of Berlin (2006), Franz Josef Küveler of Mendig/Palatinate (2011), and Günter Amann of Wehr/Baden (2016).