Today hair and skin care is mostly down to lotions, soaps, and a ton of avocados. But back in the day, when scientists didn’t bother to look into what actually worked in the field of cosmetics, they invented crazy devices for beauty.

These machines, mainly used for drying hair or doing away with wrinkles, are genuinely terrifying to look at. It kind of looks like they took discarded pieces of electric chairs and sci-fi props from movies and used them to build torture devices. The woman using these products look less like ladies getting ready for a night out, and more like aliens being experimented on by the government at Roswell.

They’re odd, fascinating, terrifying - and just might be responsible for the looks of your Grandpa’s celebrity crush.