30 January 2026

Inventions in Everything: The Patented Combover

As long as men have been losing their hair, inventors have worked to develop ways for men to overcome their follicle deficiency.

The result is a surprisingly long list including innovations stretching back millennia. It includes hats, wigs and toupées, hair transplant procedures, "spray-on" hair, and even treatments with medications like minoxidil that can regrow lost hair.

But there's one patented innovation that tops them all. On 10 May 1977, father and son inventors Frank J. Smith and Donald J. Smith were awarded U.S. Patent 4,022,227 for their Method of Concealing Partial Baldness.

Here's how it's described in the invention's abstract:

A method of styling hair to cover partial baldness using only the hair on a person's head. The hair styling requires dividing a person's hair into three sections and carefully folding one section over another.

Today, that method is much better known as "the combover"!

The patent's illustrations reveal the method patent examiners considered to be so novel they awarded the Smiths a patent for it:

U.S. Patent 4,022,227 Figures 1-6

The patent describes how the method works:

The method here disclosed uses the remaining hair around the bald area on a person's head. The hair in this area must be extra long to cover the bald area. Generally the hair should be about 3 to 4 inches long.

To use the method of this invention, the hair around the bald area is divided into equal portions, generally three such sections will be used. The sections of hair used by this method generally will be to include equal sections on each side of the head and a third section on the back of the head.

The hair to be used as covering is brushed over the bald area in alternating folds using hair spray to hold the hair in place. The uppermost section can be styled to the person's personal taste.

Normally, after presenting our featured invention, we would seek to determine how successful it has been in the marketplace. But in this case, it has to be considered phenomenally successful because evidence suggests the arguably most famous person in the world today has deployed it in public for years.

Inventions in Everything: The Archives

Ready to sample more of the most creative designs and patents the Inventions in Everything team has explored? Our first edition of 2026 contains our full archive, celebrating inventions ranging from the whimsical to the inspired in reverse chronological order!

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