Remember the abandoned patent application I shared with you last week? Remember how I said one reason for the abandonment might be the existence of a lot of prior art? Well, I found one piece of prior art; Dyer T Kendrick’s 1902 patent for a push up shave stick.

Presented as certain new and useful improvements in the art of shaving sticks, the 1902 patent does the functionally same thing as Kevin’s invention. It also does it one better, as the main body of the device is easily reusable. In that respect it is much like Colgate’s Handy-Grip.

The invention was fairly simple. In the words of the patent text:

My invention is a tubular case adapted to hold a stick or cylindrical piece of soap and provided with a push-block for moving said soap outwardly through the tube, in combination with a spring on said block arranged to hold said block in position in the tube, as hereinafter particularly described.

From US patent 700,947

As can be seen from the drawing, the body of the invention is a tube, open at both ends. One end can be closed with a lid. Riding on the inside is a cylindrical block with a grove along the circumference. And riding in the grove is a circular spring.

A shaving stick is inserted in the top of the tube. Whenever the exposed end is worn down, the shaver can push the cylindrical block up with a finger. The tension of the spring keeps the block in position. And when the soap is used up, the block can be pushed back down and a new soap inserted.

Simple, easy to understand, and likely easy to manufacture. If someone sold these today, preferable sized for Arko or other popular shave sticks, I would buy one.

You can read the full patent for Kendrick’s 1902 push up shave stick at Google Patents.