When was the safety razor invented? Pleasant little things of war

For most of the 20th century, the life of Soviet people was harsh and meager. The men shaved with straight razors and brass razors with Voskhod blades. During menstruation, women used gauze or tore old sheets into shreds. And to maintain physical fitness, many houses had a horizontal bar hanging in the doorway. Sanitary pads, sports equipment and floating head razors came to us only in the 90s - along with perestroika. Meanwhile, in the West, people have been enjoying the benefits of civilization, invented during the First World War, for almost a century.

Safety razor

"Looking in the mirror, I began to shave, but discovered that my razor was hopelessly dull. I couldn’t sharpen it myself; I had to go to a hairdresser or a sharpening shop. I looked at the razor in confusion. And then an idea was born in my head. Razor a machine with replaceable blades. I saw it entirely, in one second, asked myself dozens of questions and answered each of them. Everything happened as if in a dream...”

This is how King Camp Gillette, the founder of the Gillette Company, recalled the moment of invention. This was in the mid-1890s. King Gillette was then living in Baltimore and working as a salesman for the company of William Painter, the inventor of the crown bottle cap. Safety razors already existed then - back in 1771, the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Perret made a razor in which only the edge of the blade touched the skin. However, Perret's model was imperfect, and in everyday life men used razors with an open blade. This was dangerous - barbers often injured their clients, and the wounds became infected.

Gillette proposed the following: a machine consisting of two metal plates, with a blade between them - fixed in such a way that only two edges are exposed outside. And a removable handle attached perpendicular to the machine. The design seemed so simple to Gillette that he decided to immediately get down to business. He went to a hardware store, where he bought a roll of steel tape for making clock springs, tools and paper for drawing.

The inventor was confident of success: a roll of tape cost 16 cents, and 500 blades came out of it. However, it turned out that the blades needed thin, durable and cheap steel, for the production of which in those years there was no technology or equipment. It took six years of experimentation, $25,000, and the help of engineer William Nickerson before Gillette was able to bring his insight to life. In 1901, he patented the world's first razor with a replaceable blade - the Safety Razor. And in 1903, the first safety razors went on sale.

Buyers did not like the new product. In the first year, only 168 blades and 5 razors were sold. It was a failure - so deafening that Gillette, leaving the company in the care of friends, moved to London, where he was offered a high salary as a traveling salesman. But the very next year - thanks to good reviews in the press - the Gillette Company's business began to improve. In 1904, the company sold 91,000 machines and 123,000 blades, and by 1908, sales exceeded $13 million.

Truly safety razors became in demand during the First World War. Disposable blades were exactly what the soldiers needed at the front. Cheap, convenient, hygienic. The military command liked razors because they could save money on regimental barbers. In 1917, when America entered the war, King Camp Gillette entered into a contract with the US Department of Defense to supply safety razors to the troops. For the Gillette Company, this year was a record year - according to the most conservative estimates, 1 million razors and 120 million replacement blades were sold.

In 1921, Gillette's 20-year patent for the invention expired. Safety razors began to be produced in all countries of the world, and they became firmly established in men's everyday life. In the 1930s, plastic machines were very fashionable and were simply thrown away after use. In the late 1940s, razors equipped with cassettes with built-in blades appeared. And 10 years later - razors with a movable head. It is estimated that more than a billion razors are sold worldwide today, with replacement blade sales exceeding 40 billion. Which once again confirms the correctness of the words spoken by King Camp Gillette shortly before his death in 1932: “Of all the great inventions, the disposable razor is the greatest of the little ones.”.

Sanitary napkin

Let's say right away: until the middle of the 19th century, women did not wear pantaloons or panties. And this is understandable - the main job of women was to give birth to children, so for most of their lives women were pregnant, dressing in loose skirts that easily changed size as their bellies grew. On the days of menstruation, the lack of underwear created many difficulties. However, women somehow got out of the situation. How exactly is not known for certain. It is believed that the women of Ancient Egypt rolled tampons from papyrus, and Greek and Roman women made tampons from sheep's wool. In the Middle Ages, European ladies used fabric bandages, which were attached with ribbons to a belt or corset.

Women owe the appearance of modern sanitary pads to the First World War. It so happened that at the beginning of 1914, employees of a small American paper factory, Kimberly-Clark, visited pulp and paper mills in Germany, Austria and the Scandinavian countries to exchange experiences. There they noticed cellucotton, a new material that absorbed moisture five times better than cotton and was half the price. The Americans took it home, and when the United States entered World War I in 1917, the Kimberly-Clark company began producing dressings for the army from it - at a rate of 100-150 pieces per minute.

Military doctors really liked cellucotton, but nurses liked it even more. They came up with the idea of ​​making menstrual pads out of it, which they put into tight-fitting pantaloons (the ladies in those years had already shortened them and stripped them of flounces and lace). Therefore, when the war ended in 1918, representatives of Kimberly-Clark bought the remains of dressing materials from the military. And two years later, a completely new hygiene product appeared on the shelves of American pharmacies - Kotex, feminine pads, consisting of forty thin layers of cellulose wadding.

True, selling the new product turned out to be difficult. At that time, salespeople in pharmacies were mostly men, and women were embarrassed to ask them for pads. Then Kimberly-Clark resorted to a trick. They installed two boxes at the checkout. From one the customer took a package of pads, and into the other she put 50 cents. If suddenly the pharmacy did not have such boxes, you could simply say “Kotex” and get the goods.

By the way, at the same time, in the early 20s, one of the company’s employees - a certain Bert Furness - had the idea to iron the gasket with a hot iron. The result was the first thin and soft disposable paper tissue called Kleenex. Since then, for almost a century, these two things - a scarf and pads - have been in almost every woman's handbag.

Pilates

"The body is created by the mind"- these are the favorite words of Joseph Pilates, a sports trainer who created a popular fitness training method. Pilates was born in 1883 in Germany, in the city of Mönchengladbach. In early childhood he suffered from rickets and suffered from asthma and rheumatism. At the age of 10, having decided to improve his health, he began actively doing gymnastics and by the age of 15 he had pumped up his muscles so much that he began working part-time in art schools as a model for anatomical drawings. In 1912, Pilates moved to England, where he trained professionally in boxing and taught self-defense to police officers at Scotland Yard.

The First World War found Joseph in Britain. Together with other Germans who were in the country at that time, he was interned on the Isle of Man. He spent all four years of the war in a concentration camp. It was there, based on gymnastics, skiing, yoga, acrobatics, dancing and weightlifting, that he developed his own training system, later called Pilates. There, from improvised means, such as the frame of an iron bed, he made the first fitness equipment. During World War I, training on these simulators not only helped Joseph himself survive, but also saved the lives of his fellow prisoners.

After the war, Pilates returned to Germany, where he trained policemen and soldiers of the German army, and in 1925 he moved to New York. There, in the building of the New York City Ballet Theater, he opened a school for a healthy lifestyle. In the 1930-1940s, the Pilates studio was very popular. It was visited by ballet and film stars: George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Gregory Pack, Katharine Hepburn.

Pilates gained worldwide fame in the early 1970s (after Josef’s death), when dancer Romana Kritsanovska opened a studio in Los Angeles and John Travolta, Madonna and Kristen Scott-Thomas and many other Hollywood actors began training using this method.

We continue the history of shaving, which, as it turns out, has its hair roots going back hundreds of thousands of years. In this issue we will understand the intricacies of the history of beards and shaving in Russia, the appearance of a normal razor from Gillette and the first mechanical and electric razors.

Beard and shaving in our country

After the baptism of Rus', the mandatory wearing of a beard was established for any Orthodox man. It doesn’t matter how thick or vice versa a person’s beard is - the most important thing is that it is present. At the time of the split into two branches of churches, the Orthodox Greeks brought forward an accusation against the Romans that they had violated one of the rules prohibiting barber shaving in the Holy Scriptures: “Do not shave your locks...” (Lev.19:27). The Romans paid more attention to hygiene, and the Orthodox paid more attention to the difficulty of following all the rules. Wearing a beard was enshrined in law, and barber shaving was considered a sign of sodomy. For “touching” mustaches and beards, a hefty fine of 12 manes was imposed; for comparison, I’ll say that killing a person cost three times more. Therefore, the beard is a third of the person. This ban lasted for almost seven hundred years. Barbers were considered effeminate, pederasts, and for some reason compared to cats and dogs.

The 19th century, or rather its end, was marked by the legendary razors from the Germans, the Kempe brothers, who patented their invention in 1880. The blade was sandwiched between two strips of forged steel. The big disadvantage of the blade was that it required a constant point. Shaving kits began to be actively sold, which included blades for the whole week (for greater hygiene), a razor and a special attachment for the blade to make it safer. From a modern point of view, another extremely dangerous razor that can cut you just by looking at it. But dudes from Europe in the 19th century managed to shave with such razors and not die, and you complain that you cut yourself from the razor. But the first razors from Kempe did not suggest that razors could be changed at all; a set of blades for the whole week is an already improved version of this razor.

Razor King King Camp Gillette

Yes, dude, Gillette is not the name of the company, but the name of the person who gave us disposable machines with replaceable blades. Honor and praise to him! King founded this business, which brought him billions, when he was already 50 years old. Before that, he worked as a traveling salesman. Since childhood, the dude, whose father was a sort of local gloomy genius, has been inventing and making things. Traveling all over the country with goods from a hardware store, Gillette developed incredible skills of persuasion. All this time he was inventing something, selling it and simply coming up with all sorts of nonsense, showing himself not only as an excellent businessman, but also as a smart inventor. It only dawned on Gillette in 1885, when he was holding a Kempe razor in his hand. It dawned on him that only the blade works in the razor, and everything else is useless for shaving. He realized that a razor simply had to be light and cheap, but the blades had to be expensive, sharp, relatively strong and... replaceable. But none of the specialists of that time in matters of metallurgy could offer Gillette steel that was cheap and fully satisfied his requirements. For six years, the future billionaire searched for investors and a solution to the problem until he met mechanical engineer William Nickerson. The dude managed to solve King's dilemma and came up with a technology for strengthening and specially sharpening the blade.

Then the dudes received a patent for their invention and founded their own company. But things still weren't going well. But Gillette's gift of persuasion was able to attract investors. At first the machines were sold reluctantly. In the first year they sold only 51 machines and 168 blades. But the next year, more than one hundred thousand Americans bought new machines, and profits exceeded $13 million. Subsequently, the company began to sell more than 3 million machines a year, making Gillette the richest man. The First World War and other wars greatly contributed to the growth of the popularity of razors; the machines were cheap, convenient and were received with a bang by soldiers from different countries. The model itself of selling the main product at a reduced price (machines), but inflating the cost of consumable goods (blades), became extremely popular in the future. You can cite, for example, the sale of game consoles. Most often, the cost of the console itself is underestimated, while the cost of games is ungodly overpriced. Closer to 1970, disposable plastic razors were invented. You probably saw the very model of a T-shaped machine with two screwed halves at your parents’ house; I even still have it.

Women also decided to shave. If hair was not always removed from the armpits, hair from the legs, arms and part of the pubic area had to be removed, as men became more demanding about cleanliness. The T-shaped machine was good for everyone, but it still left cuts. Gillette also released a model for a female audience - Milady Decolletée, which was more convenient to use.

The Gillette razor changed dramatically only in 1960, when blades began to be made of stainless steel. In 1971, the traditional T-shape razor was replaced by the Trac II double-blade razor. The presence of more blades made shaving much more convenient and less energy-consuming. At the same time, the company invented special shaving soaps, creams and gels. At first they were valued more than girls, but then men also caught up.

Electric razors

For most comrades, this is a very dubious matter, although many really like it. The first electric razor appeared in 1920; it had an unrealistically long “tail” of wire. The first prototype was developed by Colonel Yakov Shik. He was unhappy that traditional shaving requires water and cream, which are not always available. The first razors required two hands and were extremely uncomfortable. The year 1927 was marked by the fact that Yakov finally invented a normal, comfortable razor with moving blades. The first sales, as in the case of Gillette, did not bring Chic much money. The razor cost $25, which today is $350. Frankly, not little. In the first year they sold 3,000 units. By 1937, Chic had sold 1,500,000, earned $20 million, and opened up the dry shaving market.

In 1940, the first convenient razors for women appeared, since hairiness peeked out indecently from fashionable nylon tights, like grass through asphalt. In the 50s, rotary electric razors appeared, which were much safer than regular ones. But in 1960, the Remington company, which also produced women's razors, released a razor that worked both from batteries and from the mains, allowing the batteries to be charged from an outlet. The widespread use of plastics and the discovery of new compounds has made it possible to significantly reduce the cost of electric razors.

Until the present moment, nothing radically new has happened in the history of shaving, except for all sorts of laser and photoepilation, after which nothing grows like after a nuclear explosion. The number of blades and types of electric razors change. Hipsters are returning to shaving with blade razors and Kempe razors, as if they shave cooler.

The leader in the Shaving Products category, the Gillette brand (USA), has not changed even once over the years of the project. In the world, the products of this company also have no equal. Anything related to so-called “safe shaving” is automatically associated with Gillette. How did you achieve this?

Modernizing things often means more than inventing them. In terms of importance, a fundamental “revision” can be considered a full-fledged invention. Gillette began its glorious journey this way.

The history of razors, that is, objects for removing hair from the human body, begins a long time ago. A long time ago. Essentially, a “shaving object” is an ordinary arc-shaped knife that has been known since prehistoric times. The first straight razors appeared among the Romans in the first centuries of our era. Further, the principle of shaving has not changed for centuries, except that the razor itself began to resemble a regular one, i.e. straight, knife People were cutting themselves, but they couldn’t do anything about it. In the 17th century, the knife became “folding”, but the essence did not change.

It is believed that the safety razor was invented in France in the 18th century. In 1762, French knife dealer and barber Jean Jacques Perret (1730-1784) came up with the idea of ​​“packing” a knife into a wooden shell, leaving only the tip outside. He literally called his invention “the carpenter’s plane.” It was this subject that led him to create the then “new generation razor.” Perret made and sold the razor, however, he did not patent his invention. He described the operation of the mechanism in his treatise “Potogomy or training in the art of shaving,” published in 1770.

Some time later, in 1787, a publication appeared in Germany that a certain Monsieur Letien from Paris had made a special shaving knife called “à rabot” (flat). When using it, there was no fear of getting wounded. The “fashionable thing” was sold in Germany with a six-month warranty and was most likely a copy of Perret’s invention.

The following description of a safety razor "surfaces" in July 1799. Also in Germany, a local trade magazine showed a razor with a removable “frame blade” called Friedlische Rasiermesser, which literally means “Peaceful Razor.” It was said that this was “a new idea from England.” This illustration (pictured above) was later cited in another German article from 1936 as an example of a precursor to the safety razor. The razor itself was manufactured in England by Harwood & Co and sold by the German Johan Christoph Roeder in Leipzig. One way or another, no one received a patent for the razor as such. This happened almost half a century later.

In the photo: sketch of Henson's safety razor

Pictured: William Henson (1812-1888)

On January 10, 1847, Englishman William Samuel Henson (1812-1888) from Somerset applied for a patent. Its essence was as follows. The shaving device, let's call it that, had the shape of a hoe. Henson himself stated that he did not claim to have invented a new method of protection from the blade, although, in fact, it was so: it was he who proposed the use of an additional comb blade. The subject of the invention was the principle of connecting the blade and the handle.

Henson's razor is believed to be the first safety razor to be patented. Interestingly, he himself became famous not in the field of shaving products, but in aeronautics. It was William Henson who designed and patented an airplane called the “aerial steam carriage” in 1842. But let's get back to shaving.

Then the modernizers of his invention began to receive patents. For example, in 1851, Charles Stewart & Company introduced their version of Henson's razor in London under the name The Plantagenet Guard Razor, with a reference in the name to the origins of British history - the Plantagenet dynasty. Apparently, they invented this way to play on the national pride of consumers.

In the photo: The Plantagenet Guard Razor razor

The next “approach to the projectile” happened in 1877 in the USA. Michael Price's invention is essentially no different from the previous two, with the exception of minor details. One way or another, the safety razor appeared in the world, however, it did not become an event for various reasons.

Pictured: Michael Price's razor, 1877

In the photo: “Pig Scraper”, 1878

In the photo: Francois Durand's razor, 1879

Don't think that all razors had the same shape. Experiments have been conducted in this area as well. So, in 1879 in France, Francois Durand patented a device that had a fixed wedge-shaped blade and roller protection. This razor was quite heavy. Five years earlier, in 1875 (the patent was issued in 1878), a razor was created, made from a single piece of sheet metal. People called it the “Pig Scraper”, since it could cut not only people, but also animals. Despite the simplicity of the device, these models did not go into mass production, but luck smiled on immigrants from Germany. By the way, at the same time the expression “safety razor” itself appeared for the first time in the language.

In the photo: Star shaving set, 1887

In 1880, brothers Otto and Frederick Kampfe applied for a patent for the first Star safety razor. Moreover, de facto it was invented five years earlier, at that time the brothers were working in a carpentry shop. It was then that it was put into production, at least this is the year indicated on the oldest surviving razors of the company. The Kampfe brothers took Henson's razor as a basis, however, the shape of the machine was significantly different. Actually, this machine is quite similar to what we use today. The advantages of the new device include a lower, although still considerable, price. This was made possible by simplifying the design.

The company was doing very well. Now the Kampfe brothers themselves bought patents from others in order to improve their own razor. But there was something to work on - the razor still required straightening and sharpening before each use. As a result, the owners of Star acquired about fifty patents, including improvements to the handle.

In total, the company released more than 25 razor designs. However, there was one more problem - the price. One dollar, which is how much the Star razor cost, was a significant amount at the end of the 19th century. By the way, this is why many continued to use inexpensive straight razors until the very beginning of the 20th century. This is when machines with Gillette disposable blades became available. How did they appear?

King Camp Gillette was a divine inventor. Before the razor, he managed to invent a lot of things: an original mechanism of a piston and bushing for a water tap, several types of electrical conductors, a new valve made of soft rubber, etc. and so on. Despite all this, he continued to work as a traveling salesman, since he could not get much money for these patents. Everything changed in 1895.

The exact time when men began shaving is unknown, although images of beardless men on cave walls suggest that the beginning of this custom dates back to prehistoric times. Even then, men were actively struggling with facial hair, and not the most humane methods and tools were used: silicon scrapers, animal teeth, mollusk shells, etc. There was another extremely unusual method: unwanted hair was smeared with clay, like modern wax for hair removal, and when it dried, it was torn off, of course, with the hair.

Flint shaving knives were allegedly used by the Sumerians and ancient Egyptians.

As metallurgy developed in the second millennium BC. e. the Egyptians switched to copper and then bronze razors, and in the 1st millennium BC. e. iron razors appeared. Initially, all razors were arched, but then the Romans developed straight razors.

Around 1100 BC, the prototype of modern razors appeared. According to scientists' research, it was then that people began to use a razor with a handle and one blade.

The idea of ​​a safety razor was first proposed in 1770 by a French barber named Jean-Jacques Perret. The razor of that time looked almost like the straight razor we are used to.

Since the 18th century, the stronghold of razor production has been the English city of Sheffield. Later, a second shaving center appeared - the German city of Solingen. The number of brands and manufacturers that existed at that time was so large that today it is difficult to reconstruct the history of their development. Hundreds of small and large enterprises supplied countless razors to the world market. Razors from Solingen have become famous for their first-class deep sharpening. The rustling rustle they make when shaving has earned them the additional name “singing razors.”

Humanity owes a new stage in the development of shaving to the well-known American - King Camp Gillette. In 1895, this amateur inventor came up with an innovation that buried straight razors and gave life to straight razors - he clamped a blade sharpened on both sides in a handle holder. It took Gillette 8 years to develop and bring the product to market, so his razor appeared on the shelves only in 1903.

In 1926, Colonel Jacobov Schick invented a razor design with two knives - movable and fixed. The moving blade, as you might guess, began to work from a small electric motor. These razors later became known as rotary razors, and they also became the first electric shavers. They went on sale in 1929.

Around 1950, so-called “foil” electric shavers appeared, which were invented by Max Brown - model S50. This razor was distinguished by a fixed mesh blade, which was bent in a semicircle and covered the entire area of ​​the shaving head. A movable knife adjacent to the inside moved from edge to edge of the head and cut off the hairs. This razor differed from rotary razors in that it did not cause skin irritation.

King Kemp Gillette is perhaps best known as the inventor of the safety razor. But in fact this is not true: the first safety razors were invented already in the 1880s by the Kampf brothers. The photos below show razors circa 1903.

The Kampf brothers, Frederick (c.1851-1915), Richard (1853-1906), and Otto (1855-1932) were born in Saxony. The two youngest, Richard and Otto, immigrated to the United States in 1872, shortly after the end of the French-Russian War. By that time they were 17 and 19 years old, and they, according to some sources, managed to serve for several years as apprentices to a knife manufacturer in Germany. It is also possible that their older brother, Frederick, had also already come to the United States. The brothers settled in New York and opened a hardware business. Not many facts have been preserved from this time, but judging by the papers, things have progressed.

In May 1880, Frederick and Otto filed a patent for "a new and convenient improvement for the safety razor." This was the moment when the name "safety razor" was first used. The trademark, filed in 1903, "claimed the use of the name 'Star' and the mark since June 1, 1880."
Official story as described by American Safety Razor Co. (which acquired the business in 1919) states that "the Kampf brothers began manufacturing the Star safety razor in 1875 in a one-room shop in New York City." By 1899, the establishment occupied the entire space at 8-10-12 Reade St. An advertisement for the Kampf Brothers 1911 read: “Star... has been in use for 36 years. We were experts in knife making before we invented the safety razor." This also confirms that the razor was first made in 1875. (Some collectors mark the date 1875 on the top of the handle.)

Star used Henson's idea: a hoe-shaped razor with a wedge-shaped blade and a short body (4 cm long and 2 cm wide). The blade was attached using metal brackets and did not require knocking on the screw hole. A distinctive feature was the shape of the razor body, which functioned as a “foam eliminator”. The razor was cheaper to produce than some of its parts that were later patented by competitors