A little while ago I wrote about a 1931 patent on storing a shaving aid in the handle of a razor. And now I found a newer patent that cites that one. A patent for a razor with cleaning brush. A cleaning brush stored, unsurprisingly, in the handle of the razor.
Filed in 2008 and published two years later, there isn’t too much to the patent. There is a brush. It is stored in the handle. You use the brush to clean the razor. And that is, more or less, it.
Continue readingThere have been no lack of patents for shocking, vibrating, oscillating, buzzing, and bulky safety razors over the years. Some were meant to be plugged into the electrical grid, and some were powered externally. But this patent for an electric safety razor, filed in 1937, were powered by an replaceable battery.
It was filed by Alexander Schaaf and Rudolf Schunermann, from Berlin-Charlottenburg and Nowawes1 respectively. The US patent office granted the patent in 1942, which is interesting since this was after Germany declared war on the US.
Continue readingThere is an idiom in Norwegian, stating that “alle gode ting er tre”. The closest I know of in English is the phrase “third time is the charm”, which has a similar enough meaning.
So keep that in mind. This is, at this stage, a step by step process.
This follows up from an experiment I did earlier, and the second experiment too. I have tried to take into account the feedback y’all have been kind enough to give. And it is because I wanted to try something several of you mentioned, that this is coming a couple of weeks after the last try.
Continue readingSeveral of the patents we’ve looked at lately took the form of pen-shaped – more or less – shaving and hygiene kits, some with additional functions. Most of them stored some form of shaving aid in the handle – a tiny brush, soap powder or pellets. But what if I told you there was a patent for doing just that? One that covered just having a shaving aid stored in the razor handle?
Continue reading1902-28763. Or, for those who can’t quite recall the patent numbers of the top of their heads, one of King Gillette’s earliest patents for the classic three piece Old Type Razor.
It wasn’t King Gillette’s earliest patent, nor his last. It is, as far as I am aware, the earliest of his patents showing the classic Old Style razor with the bottom knob. Both his early US patents – US 775,134 and US 775,135 – required the user to either unscrew the handle or use the whole handle as a knob.
Continue readingA little while ago I conducted a little experiment. Today there is a second take on that experiment, building on feedback I got the first time around.
Continue readingWhile a razor that can fit in a pocket – a pocket razor, if you like – is all well and good, there have to be compromises made when you want to have a razor the size of a fountain pen. The pen style shavette, the pen with a razor, and Bowlin’s patent all shared one drawback; they used proprietary, narrow blades. The compact razor we looked at a little while back avoids that issue, by being chunkier. But what if you want to retain that pen like sleekness, yet still use a full sized razor blade? Then you end up with C J Garritson’s all-flex pocket razor.
Continue readingThe history of the shaving industry can be described – in part – as being a fight over control. As long as a company controls the patent, they control the manufacture – and thus the cash flow. A very good example of this is the blade. As long as Gillette’s patent for the three hole blade was in force, no one else could legally make three hole blades. Once the patent got close to expiration, Gillette started to innovate again. One constrain was that a new blade should fit old razors too – but new razors shouldn’t be able to use the old style blade. The result was a new slotted blade – but not quite the blade we know today.
Continue readingWe can all agree that hygiene is important, even when we are not at home. And it was for those times that Raymond J. Gotto filed a patent for a hygiene implement in 1982. A vaguely pen-like implement that contained a tooth brush, and a razor, the device would been easy to bring along. Or buy from a vending machine, for that matter.
The form factor and overall compactness puts Mr Gotto’s invention in the same class as the pen style shavette from 1921, the compact razor from 1927, the combination writing instrument and shaver’s kit from 1936, and of course Bowlin’s shaving kit from 1947.
Continue readingLaziness is the mother of inventions. At least, it seems to have been an important reason why John K Joice filed a patent for an automatic razor in 1906. It was made specifically so that people with no skill could shave. To qoute:
The object of my invention is to provide a razor which may be used without special skill on the part of the person who is shaving himself, in other words, a razor of the safety type.
From US patent 899,870
Perhaps I am a little hard with Mr Joice. Any safety razor can be described as letting people with no skill shave. And while novel when patented, being a safety razor is not the outstanding part of his invention.
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