There are times the title of a patents makes me stop and wonder if I actually read what I thought I read. The patent title of “automatically ignited and extinguished hot water shaving brush” by William G Frazier was definitely one of those times. I had to read it more than twice, if I’m to be honest.

The patent is – according to the patent text – an improvement on two of William’s previous patents. The previous patents claimed a novel way to heat the water passing to the bristles. This patent improves on that by adding a novel way to effect the automatic ignition of the fuel, as well as the automatic extinguishing of the flame.

No, I was not aware that a shaving brush would come with flammable fuel. To the best of my knowledge, most do not. But William found a way…

As can be seen from the drawing, William came up with a shaving brush more complicated than most. You got a telescoping assembly with a water tank, a fuel tank, air holes, an automatic lighter, and, almost as an afterthought, a shaving brush knot. Oh, and some thermostatic elements and springs and stuff.

How it was used? Well, let us turn to the lengthy description in the patent text:

The operation will now be apparent to those skilled in this art and is as follows:
The base. 20 is unscrewed and the water tank 9 filled to a desired amount with water. Alcohol or other ignitable fuel is placed in the container to Saturate the Wick 2 and the sleeves f3, and 26 are moved into the position seen in Figure 3 with the outer sleeve, 26 screwed to the cap. The shaving brush is now ready for repeated operations. The user unscrews the sleeve 26, and the spring 5 raises the igniting unit 4 and the inner sleeve 3 so that the openings 4, 5 and 6 are uncovered, and the sleeve 26 is raised into the position seen in Figure 2. The air entering the ports causes the igniting unit to glow and the alcohol is ignited, thus heating the water in the tank 9. The outer sleeve 26 is retained in its raised position by the thermostatic members 25 contacting with its inner face until the Water reaches a predetermined temperature, whereupon the members 25 will move inwardly to release the outer sleeve which will drop sufficiently to close the ports 4, 5 and 6. This causes the burner to be extinguished as the flow of air to the burner is cut off. The user then presses the outer sleeve downwardly against the pressure of the spring 5 and screws it to the cap . The operator can now use the shaving brush in the conventional manner, the hot water passing to the bristles. If the valve 22 is employed, such valve is of course opened.

I mean.. it probably works. And I can sort of, kind of see that the brush William came up with being useful if you don’t have access to hot water when shaving.

But even so… William made something as simple as a shaving brush very complicated. And potentially on fire too.

You can read the full patent for William G Frazier’s automatically ignited and extinguished hot water shaving brush over at Google Patents