Back in the day, hair dryers and perm machines looked like they would eat your brain.

A roundup of photos of the vintage devices that makes you think think we sure did — and still do — some absolutely insane things for beauty.

How wouldn’t some of these scare you off from the salon? Many of the apparatuses resemble some crazy machines from sci-fi movies that are meant to hurt you not curl your hair. Some look more like vacuums than dryers. You’d have to be kind of daring to stick your head in one of them.

But despite the menacing aspect of these vintage machines, it’s pretty neat to see how far we’ve come in 80 or so years. The whole photoset — worth a look over at Dark Roasted Blend — will make you glad our beauty tech has evolved so much.