On November 15, 1904, patent #775,134 was granted to King C. Gillette for a safety ‘razor’. King Camp Gillette was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin in 1855. To support himself when the family’s home was destroyed in the Chicago Fire of 1871, Gillette became a traveling salesman. This work led him to William Painter, [...]

AS A pre-teen, I wondered why my Dad’s double edge razor blades had that weird shape. Was it simply an artistic design or was there some rational reason? Other more interesting curiosities soon caught my attention and I forgot about the blade puzzle.

Invention
The first safety razor was invented in the late 18th century by a Frenchman, Jean-Jacques Perret, who was inspired by the joiner’s plane. An expert on the subject, he also wrote a book called Pogonotomy or the Art of Learning to Shave Oneself. In the late 1820s, a similar razor was made in Sheffield, England, and from [...]