Ah, the things we do for beauty! The contraption pictured may resemble a torture chamber, but it was a prominent fixture in beauty shops for decades, providing women with a solution for straight hair.

NORRIS: This procedure developed into the so-called machine perm. Of course, perms have changed since then. There was the home perm, and the cold perm, and then came the 1980s. (Soundbite of music) ...

With hair straighteners and $500 hair dryers among the popular grooming tools on the market, it's no wonder perms are going out of style. Perms were all the fashion rage from the 1950s and many women ...