Original Jet Towel Prototype Although the Dyson Airblade has revolutionized the hand dryer market, and made hand dryers an acceptable topic of conversation in pubs and even dinner parties across the country (no? perhaps that’s just us then) it was Mitsubishi Electric in Japan who first invented the idea.

Back in the last century, Mitsubishi engineers came up with the idea of having sheets of air which, rather than using heated air to evaporate the water from your hands, would actually scrape it from the surface of your skin.

This led to the launch, in 1993 of the first ‘blade’ dryer, and today this has evolved into the efficient and stylish Mitsubishi Jet Towel hand dryer range. The concept has also been used in other manufacturers’ products, notably the Dyson Airblade and the Biodrier Business and Executive models. It also started the big debate of the ‘hands-in’ Vs ‘hands-under’ rivalry.

Since then, these dryers have been improved with drip-trays, digital motors, air freshening capability and massively increased airflow technology and for many people, they will not even consider looking at a 'hands-under' dryer ever again.

But before Mitsubishi launched the first blade dryer in 1993, they had to build a number of prototypes to prove and refine the mechanics. All hand dryer aficionados will be interested to see what the very first of those looked like; here’s a picture sent to us by our friends at Mitsubishi: Original Jet Towel Prototype

as you can see, two motors were driving air into 2 air bars, each of which had a slit in them and this created the blade of air. In this prototype, the hands would be placed between these 2 bars.

It looks a bit different today, after many years of development and commercialisation!