Who designed the first safety razor?
First SAFETY RAZOR
The first SAFETY RAZOR designed for use with disposable blades was patented by King Camp Gillette on 2 December 1901. The, original inspiration had come from his employer, William Painter, inventor of the disposable crown cork, who suggested: ‘Why don’t you invent something which will be used once and thrown away ? Then the customer will come back for more.’ Gillette was unable to act on this good advice until 1895; the idea came to him as he stood before the shaving minor one day and considered how little of his cut-throat razor was actually used for the business of shaving—no more than the edge. His plan was to produce a sharp edge with as little superfluous steel backing as possible.
The problem of producing a blade thin enough, flat enough, sharp enough and cheap enough, which steel manufacturers told him was impossible, was finally solved by an inventive mechanic called William Nickerson, the only employee—on a half-time basis— of the nascent American Safety Razor Co., which Gillette had formed in Boston on 28 September 1901. Production began in 1903, though by the end of the year the sales figures were hardly indicative of the death of the cut-throat razor, the 51 purchasers of a Gillette Safety Razor having disposed of a nationwide total of exactly 168 blades. Gillette’s great idea may have seemed an ill-time disaster; in fact, he was on the threshold of triumph. A year later no fewer than 90,000 Americans had taken to the safety razor habit and consumed between them nearly 12 million disposable razor blades.
In Britain the Gillette Safety Razor was introduced in 1905. Long-life stainless steel razor blades a contradiction of Gillette’s ‘use-once-and-throw-away’ principle—were first introduced by the British firm of Wilkinson Sword in 1956.
