Everyone remembers the little black comb we received, raked through our tangled hair then discarded on school picture day, but tracking down its history was an amateur investigative reporter's worst nightmare. Fortunately for you, the suspense has finally been ended.

Origin: The comb as a concept (not U.S. patent) dates back at least to Egyptian times when workers needed a better way to remove pyramid crumbles from their hair. For school portrait purposes, the majority of U.S.-made little black combs currently come from Leominster, Mass., aka “Comb City.”

Details: The little black comb's technical name is “5-Inch Black Pocket Comb” and is made of celluloid acetate, a biodegradable/recyclable material. It is also available in red, blue, yellow and green, but black remains the best-selling.

Manufacturer: One of the little black comb's top distributors is A&R Plastics/Jumbo Plastics, which sells to heavy-hitter photography studios like Lifestyle and Inter-State. The two companies merged in 2000, but Jumbo Plastics had been around since the mid-'70s. Before that, it was Zee Plastics, so the exact year the little black comb started crashing school portraits had to be determined by researching America's oldest portrait company.

First School Portrait Company: Barksdale photos was founded in 1922, the first company ever to take individual school portraits instead of group shots after S.P. Barksdale, a magazine photographer/salesman, started giving parents the option to buy the photos he was taking at 10 cents for one to 50 cents for six.

Portrait-Comb Union: Barksdale was our best shot at estimating the year the portrait-comb union took place, but the owner did not return my voicemails—maybe I would have had better luck if I mailed him the request in an 8.5 x 11 white envelope with a psychologically-damaging clear plastic window. Instead, I had to narrow it down to some point between 1922 and 1938, when one of my oldest acquaintances recalls receiving a comb with her picture.

Who Pays for It: School portraits are lucrative enough that photography studios can afford to buy and distribute the little black comb in bulk—a small price to pay to diminish the chance and cost of redos and reprints.

What It Costs: The cost varies with quantity ordered, but we think it's priceless.

Special thanks to my school principal, Inter-State Studio and A&R Plastics for making this fragmented piece of pseudo-journalism possible.