Gillette started manufacturing safety razors in 1903, and were advertising fairly heavily in the early years. One recurring theme in the early marketing is how economical it was to use, making it an economical luxury to shave yourself instead of going to a barber.
The Literary Digest Volume 31, 1905
Five dollars for a razor with a dozen blades sounds cheap today, but with inflation taken into consideration it is almost 150 dollars in today’s money. Not nearly as much as some of the high end safety razor we can buy in this day and age, but not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. And replacement blades were a dollar a dozen, which is equal to two dollar and fifty cents a blade in 2020 money – which isn’t too far off from what you would pay if you bought the latest cartridges from Gillette today.
If I was paying that much for a blade, I would want it to last as well… although I’m not sure that they would shave as good for twenty to forty shaves as they did when new from the wrapper. This claim is also on par with today’s cartridges by the way; a lot of marketing material from Gillette claims a month worth of shaves from each cartridges (and I’m just as dubious about that claim as I am of a DE blade lasting a month or more).
The more things change – from DE to plastic cartridges – the more stay the same when it comes to price and claimed longevity. At least the black and white hand-drawn advertisements from a hundred and fifteen years ago looked a lot more stylish than today’s full colour photoshopped glossy posters we get today.
While I don’t see the appeal – or the point – of a vibrating razor, patents for razors that shake, rattle and roll have been applied for multiple times1 over the last century – the idea keeps popping up like a weed in your lawn. Lately it seems to have taken root among cartridge razors, but the current crop is far from Gillette’s first attempt to bring some buzz into the bathroom.
A trio of vintage Williams advertisements, from 1916, 1917, and 1920.
Popular Mechanics, 1916
First one is from 1916, showcasing the whole line up of shaving powder, shaving liquid, shaving cream and shaving stick – as well as pointing out that the company have been makign soap for seventy five years (technically seventy six, but I’ll allow a bit of fudge in ad copy)
The Literary Digest, January 1917
That smile appeared in 1917, and apparently had not meet the shave before Williams came up with the Big Stick. Or possible the guys writing the copy was stretching the truth a tiny bit…
The Literary Digest, September 1920
Still smiling three years later, although if the text is to be believed the smile is now in the lather. Well, at least in the lather that came from the cream.
Three ads over four years, showing a shift from focusing on the facts – “these are our shaving products and we made them for a long time” – to feelings – “our shaving products will make you smile”. In hindsight, the later approach probably sold more shaving soap.
Williams’ is an old brand… sometimes vilified in this golden age of wetshaving, but if reports from trustworthy shavers is to be believed the vintage formulations was/is pretty good.
1898 advertisement for the Williams’ Shaving Soaps from J. B. Williams Company (Glastonbury, Connecticut)
One hundred and twenty two years ago, Williams had already been making shaving soaps for half a century… well, technically for more than half a century, since James B. Williams manufactured the first shaving soap for use in shaving mugs in 1840 – a whooping one hundred and eighty years ago today. It might be fashionable to talk down the modern formulation – I have not tried it yet, although I probably ought to at some point just to see how horrible it really is – but they have to do something right to stay around for that long.
I found an interesting 1934 advertisement for the GEM one-piece open comb Micromatic, highlighting some of the key selling points of the razor when compared to other and presumably inferior shaving utensils.
Holds the blade secure – five points of contact – so it can use a blade sharp enough to control any beard!
Designed to force the user to get a close shave, by making the user lay the cap flat against the face – which, by the way, is one reason I sometimes recommend a GEM to a new shaver over a Double Edge; the angle is easier to get right
Cheaper then other razors – allegedly ten million had switched to GEMs since the Great Depression, thus proving that GEMs were cheaper and better.
Collier’s, September 15th 1934
In addition to the offer of an gold plated Micromatic and an unspecified amount of blades for one dollar (about 20USD today), the advertisement tells us that a single quarter would get you a testing set of one non-gold razor, one single- and one double-edged1 blade. Pretty good value, and I suspect the 25 cent razor would last a long time too as long as you bought blades.
Back in February I posted about a 1919 patent by Mr Joseph Kaufman of the American Safety Razor Corp, covering the invention of a shaving stick with a cocoa butter core. Today I learned two things; in 1919, the American Safety Razor Corp spun off a subsidiary by the name of Safetee Soap Corporation, and one of the first products offered by this subsidiary was – unsurprisingly – a shaving stick… with a cocoa butter core.
from eBay via Google Image Search
Reading the marketing wank lines up close to the patent description – although more verbose and less technical – as far as the cocoa butter goes:
You can see the beard-softening, skin-soothing core of pure cocoa-butter which runs from end to end… …getting a beneficial cocoa-butter massage which soothes the skin like an added lotion.
Other features of the soap lines up less well with the patent; it’s round instead of square, it appears to be sold in a tin and not in a flexible sleeve -although there seems to be an inner cover on the soap in addition to the tin, the upper drawing seems to point to this being a metal foil.
So while I don’t think you can get a shaving stick like this today (unless an artisan feels inclined to make some that is) as I lamented in my previous post, you could in the early twenties for a mere thirty cents… and you could get a sample for the cost of a letter and ten cents in stamps.
Pores. We all have them and – at least according to this advertisement that was printed in Illustrated London News in 1899 – they are always open, just waiting for an impure particle to enter so it can mingle with the life-giving current of our blood and kill us… impure particles such as a lesser brand of shaving soap, since – allegedly – nothing comes closer to our skin than the lather we shave with.
From an 1899 Illustrated London News
FUD based advertisement at it’s finest… for starters, I’m not entirely convinced that you could force soap inside your pores with a brush unless you tried very hard – nor am I convinced that pores opens directly into the blood stream… unless a lot of the biology I learned in school was completely off the mark. The worst an impure soap can do is to give you horrible skin problems; clogged pores, acne, pimples, boils, and abscesses… some of which could – in the days before antibiotics and modern medicine – be fatal if left untreated. So I guess whoever wrote the advertisement had a point in that you should avoid soaps with questionable ingredients, even if the explanation is off the mark.
That said, one shilling for a shaving stick or luxury shaving tablet (and just half that – six pence – for an ‘American shaving tablet’) don’t sounds too bad – until you realised that adjusted for inflation it’s close to 6.50£ or 8.10$ – not expensive, but not cheap either.
Today’s patent isn’t all that unique, apart from being invented by the same gentleman whom patented the travel razor I looked at last Thursday. It is one of the recurring self-feeding or fountain shaving brushes – of which I’ve snarked on several before1 – and the claimed improvement was in the way it was made.
The principal object of the invention is to provide a simply constructed and efficiently operating device, which is sanitary in use, sightly in appearance and may be economical manufactured.
Christian E A Gronbech, US 1,1409,168
US patent 1,409,168
As can be seen from the drawing, the handle of the brush is hollow, with a threaded rod down the centre. The cap on the base of the handle is secured to the rod by means of a screw – allowing the rod to be turned – and a plunger or piston rides on the rod. A pair of longitudinal indentation – or ridges, if you prefer – is pressed into the sides of the handle (refer to figure 2 on the drawing) for the plunger to ride on as it’s screwed up and down.
The plunger itself is a sandwiched construction, consisting of two disks with a washer between them. While the patent text don’t specify, I suspect that the two disks (24) was meant to be metal while the washer was made of rubber – thus creating a seal against the sidewalls of the handle.
The knot sits in a base (15) which is secured to the handle by means of screw threads (12y), and can be removed by the user – has to be removed in fact, in order to refill soap paste. The base has a hole in the middle to allow soap paste to enter the brush.
As the cap is turned and the plunger pushes towards the knot, the soap paste in the handle is forced past openings (ducts and an axial bore) in the rod and into the knot, allowing the user to lather up and get shaving.
When the handle is empty of the soap paste, the user is meant to unscrew the knot, move the plunger all the way to the back of the handle by means of the cap, and refill the handle from a small tube screwed into a threaded hole under the knot – an air hole allowed for the air in the handle to be expelled during this operation.
Looking at the drawing, it’s obvious that most of the parts can be constructed by stamping sheet metal and off the shelf pieces (like the screw rod and screw), allowing for fast, inexpensive manufacture with minimal machining. The handle can even be a length of extruded aluminium if someone wants to make this today, and it don’t even have to be round as long as the plunger is a tight fit (if it’s not round you wouldn’t necessarily need the pair of ridges either).
Patented at about the same time as his handleless travel razors, Gronbech’s self feeding brush would have made a nice addition to the dopp bag since it would have done away with the need to carry a tube of soap separably. However it does suffer from the same fault as all self feeding shaving brushes I’ve seen so far; the soap is introduced to the base of the knot, not towards the tips where the lather is actually built.
Way back in the Olden Days – May of 2015 to be exact – I posted about a tiny little travel razor I had found some photos of and were fascinated by. The logo on the back points to Bigelow and Perkin Co, a company that operated out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A very similar, close to identical, razor was manufactured by Gronbech – likely in Woodhaven, New York – was marketed under the names of Groenbech and Handy. Additionally – according to Waits’ Compendium – there was at least one unmarked copy of this style of travel razor marketed in the 20’s.
More recently I managed to track down the actual patents for it, all filed by Mr Christian E A Gronbech; US 1,370,9351 – granted on March 8th 1920, US 1,370,960 granted same date, and US 1,376,759 granted on May 3rd 1921. While the three are broadly similar, there is an interesting difference: The two later is set up to be adjustable, after a fashion. As the patent texts says:
…the invention comprises a blade holder, in which the blade may be adjusted, such blade holder provided with means cooperating with complemental means in a part of the razor for securely retaining the blade in adjusted position in the razor
Christian E A Gronbech, US 1,370,960
Another object is to provide in a razor of this kind, simple means for adjusting the depth or protrusion of the cutting edge of the blade so as to secure a more or less close shaving action, as may be desired.
Christian E A Gronbech, US 1,376,769
The big difference between the patents is for what kind of blade they are set up for; 1,370,935 is set up for three hole Gillette blades (which means modern DE blades will fit), 1,370,760 is set up for Christy style (spineless, with or without ears) single edge blades, while 1,376,759 can accept both of the former as well as EverReady/GEM style blades (single edge with spine).
While the razor set up for Gillette blades simply have a pair of studs in the top cap lining up with matching holes in the bottom, the ones for Christy and GEM style blades utilises different forms of holders. The holder for Christy style blades held the blade by a pair of simple tabs that reached over the blade, while the latest patent included the option of using three different kind of holders; one for single edged blades with a spine, one for single edged spineless blades and one for Gillette style double edged blades – even if just one edge was exposed in the razor. The patent text describes it as follows:
…designed to interchangeably receive different kinds of blades, without requiring any adjustment or rearrangement of the parts of the razor.
Christian E A Gronbech, US 1,376,769
It is the use of holders that provide the ability to adjust how aggressive the razor is, by adjusting how much of the edge is exposed. for the first form of holder – as described in US 1,370,960 – the user would adjust how much the edge stuck out by sliding the blade back and forth in the holder. The holders described in US 1,376,759 used a different trick, and was adjusted by an inclined tab sticking down from the holder into an inclined slot – so that sliding the holder from side to side would also push the edge in and out of the razor.
US 1,370,935 – set up for double edged blades, non-adjustableUS 1,370,960 – set up for Christy style blades, adjustableUS 1,376,759 – set up for various blades, adjustable
Seeing the three patents in succession, it’s easy to see how the idea of a simple vest-pocket razor evolved from a razor consisting of four stamped parts (and two pins) that would accept a single style of blade into a more refined, adjustable vest-pocket razor consisting of five stamped parts (and two pins) that accepted the three major styles of blades available at the time. With that in mind it’s kind of sad that the only version that seems to have made it to production in any numbers was the simple one for double edged blades.
The first patent also had Mr Winfred H Van Gorder as a co-inventor.
While it may seem a waste of time for us today, living – as we do – in the era of inexpensive, stainless razor blades, less than a century ago people actually stropped their razor blades in order to keep them sharper for longer. A number or razors even came with blade holders in order to make this process easier, but what if your razor didn’t come with one, or you had several different razors you wanted to strop the blades for?
Fear not, because in 1930 Mr David J Prince patented an improvement to the safety-razor-blade holder that would accept any major blade on the marked!
…a convenient, inexpensive holder for razor blades when it is desired to sharpen the same by stropping and it particularly seeks to provide a holder which will take either Valet, Christy, Gillette or Durham type blades, or those having backs such as the Gem, EverReady, Star and other well known kinds.
David J Price
For those who are not familiar with the different blades, that don’t sound too difficult.. but one have to keep in mind that this would include single and double edged blades, with and without holes and slits, with and without ears, and with and without a thick spine along the back. All told an impressive range of shapes and thicknesses that the design have to account for.
US patent 1 797 589
As can be seen from the patent drawing, the blade holder consisted of two hinged plates that clamped the blade between them. Since each plate had ‘half’ a screw on the end, tightening the handle on the blade holder locked the two plates together and clamped the blade securely. Or as the patent describes it, each plate:
…has a threaded shank 2 at one end and a hinge ear 4 at the other end, the threaded shank having a portion cut away.
David J Price
The plates had groves or cutout int he middle of them as well as a couple of holes drilled through, and for different blade styles there would be different ways for securing the blade;
for Durham, Gillette and Varlet blades, there was a pair of loose studs (called lugs in the patent text) that lined up with the holes cut in the blade
for Christy style blades, the studs were removed
and a GEM style blade would rest in the groves themselves
All told a simple and ingenious solution to the problem of providing clamping pressure on a variety of blades -as long as you didn’t loose the two studs that is. One improvement I can see immediately would be to give the studs threads on the part that fitted into the holes in the holder – said holes would have to be threaded too – and when stropping a blade without holes simply fasten them on the outside of the plate.
I can also see this being useful as a simple, cheerful and somewhat scary kamisori-style shavette – one that allowed a shaver to experiment with several different styles of blades, although the selection in this day and age is smaller than it was in the late 20’s and early 30’s.1
As far as I can tell, this is the only razor or shaving related patent Mr Price filed for, which is a shame, cause I would have loved to see if he could come up with a razor that fitted multiple styles of blades as well.
For starters, there is to the best of my knowledge no one that manufactures Valet, Durham or Christy style blades any longer. Update: I’m informed that Feather still makes blades that fit Valet and Durham razors.
