Clever Pair of Antique Tools Used to Perfectly Transfer Head Measurements to Hats

Just learned about this: Traditional hatters used a pair of tools called a conformer and a formillion to ensure hats perfectly fit their clients.

The conformer captures the client’s head measurements in a math-free way, marking a paper template. That template is then used to position a series of dies in the formillion. The hat is then placed over the formillion and steamed into shape:

Here’s the longer version, with narration:

Incredibly clever!

Source: core77