As we approach a new year and a new decade, what will the new Roaring Twenties have in store? One thing is certain: they have a lot to live up to, because the 1920s gave us female emancipation, traffic lights, talking pictures and so many other innovations that set us firmly on the path to our modern society.

Here are five things you might not have known were first introduced to the world 100 years ago.

1. Handheld hair dryer

The everyday gadget that allows you to blow dry your hair at home, on holiday, or even at work, arrived on the market in 1920. Prior to this, dryers were only available in hairdressing salons and were massive, static machines with hoods, so the handheld appliance was a game changer – albeit a rather hazardous one initially: the combination of electricity and water resulted in cases of electrocution.

2. Band-Aid

Not the charity pop ensemble of the 1980s, but the humble sticking plaster. A staple of first aid boxes in homes across the land, the earliest incarnation was the brainchild of a Johnson & Johnson employee who wanted to create a self-adhesive bandage to enable people to dress their own wounds. The European equivalent, Elastoplast – also known as Hansaplast – followed soon after in 1922.

3. Cadbury’s Flake

Britain’s crumbliest, flakiest chocolate first emerged, like many great inventions tend to do, quite by accident. The first Flake was a by-product of other confections. A production worker noticed how the leftover chocolate formed ripples as it overflowed from the moulds. Nowadays, an ice cream cone seems quite undressed without its little chocolate accessory.

4. Doctor John Dolittle

Hugh Lofting’s much-loved character who could talk to the animals made his debut in the snappily-titled 1920 book, The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts Never Before Printed. The first film version, starring Rex Harrison, was released almost half a century later, in 1967; but it’s the 1998 remake starring Eddie Murphy that still crops up most often on TV.

5. Prohibition in the USA

America’s Eighteenth Amendment, making it illegal to manufacture or sell alcohol, was rolled out in January 1920. While the booze ban was hailed by campaigners for temperance and social reform, it drove production and consumption of alcohol underground, giving rise to gangsters, bootleggers, and unlicensed venues known as speakeasies, where people went to imbibe their favourite, forbidden tipples. With parts of the country increasingly in the grip of organised crime, prohibition was eventually repealed in 1933, a potential surge in alcohol-related health problems being regarded as the lesser of two evils.

Here’s to an exciting, creative, innovative and, most of all, Happy New Year.