Imagine that you’re going on a vacation. You have a travel razor to shave with. You probably have a travel brush too. But do you have a folding barber’s chair and stool? No? Then how can you be shaved in style while traveling?
Fear not; Henry Remick have patented a handy, folding chair and stool for barbers (and also dentists and so on). It also came with a telescoping barber pole, because… because why not, I guess.
Continue readingAt the turn of the last century, Amos H Jackson patented a one piece razor made from sheet metal. Well, he patented two, but the first one was not quite a one piece razor.
Continue readingWilliam Herzberg patented an indicating sealed shaving cup in 1911, as part of the quest to make sure that your barber didn’t infect you with whatever ailment the previous customer had.
He was not the first, not the last. We have looked at a great many solutions to that problem over the years. But his solution was different enough and simple enough that it warranted a look.
Continue readingRemember a few years ago when Gillette and the other big multinationals came out with vibrating, plasticy, multiblade horrors cartridge razors? Turns out the idea wasn’t new. Fernan Conill, a Cuban living in New York, patented an electric vibrating horror safety razor back in 1916.
Shaving requires a lot of gear – at least if you want to do it the right way. You will need a brush, a mug, a mirror, and maybe even a styptic pencil. And all that stuff makes a mess on the vanity… unless you got one of the patented all in one shaving mugs invented by Bernard Goodfellow Savage and Albert Cecil Lawless Loughran, that is.
Continue readingA little while back – because four years is nothing – I wrote a little piece on the Rally dry shaver. And now, while aimlessly poking through online patent texts, I found the patent for it.
Filed in the US and Germany by a Swede, the Rally was, as I mentioned, a lawnmower for your face. A handy way to get rid of that five o’clock shadow. A great gift that would likely be used twice and then put in a drawer.
Continue readingA problem challenge with straight razors is that they require skill to keep sharp. A safety razor on the other hand – be it using double edged, single edged, or even wedge blades – requires a lot less skill. So it is perhaps inevitable that someone will come up with a straight that uses replacable blades. Today we often call them shavettes. But when A V Brokhahne and C Langbein patented an early version back in 1887, they choose a more descriptive name: attachable and detachable back for razor-blades.
I have pointed it out before. Perfection is not achieved when there is nothing more to add – but rather when there is nothing more to remove. Seen through that lens, John B Lydiards 2020 patent for a shaving brush with interchangeable bristles is far from perfect.
The idea is simple enough. Different shaving brush knots have different qualities, and people prefer different knots. Some likes the softness of badger, some prefer a scritchy boar. Me, I like a good horse. But to get back on track, let us see what John had to say in the patent text
Continue readingOne would thing there would be little left to invent, at least as far as shaving brushes goes. One would be wrong. Over in Japan, Mrs 由美子 井上 – or Yumiko Inoue for those of us who don’t read Japanese – recently got a patent for a shaving brush with a notch.
Continue readingInjectors can be complicated razors, even when meant to be simple. The forerunners of injectors were more complicated still. But today I have a nice find for you all; a very simple sheet metal injector. Patented by A William H Camfield in 1936, the patent was assigned to the Magazine Repeating Razor Co – the people behind the Schick Magazine Razors.1
The invention was touted as an improved and simplified form of safety razor and magazine, which also was cheap to manufacture.
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