In order to celebrate a couple of things I’m running a countdown deal on the Kindle version of my book “70 razor and shaving patents“!
This is a very unique and interesting book. I have always enjoyed early 20th century patents. This book is full of them – 200 pages worth – all related to traditional wet shaving. What I appreciate the most is the author’s commentary. He points out the most interesting aspects of the patent in a couple of short paragraphs. This isn’t always obvious from the patent drawing itself, so the author has done the work of reading through the patent and describing the vision and features of the invention. The book is easy to flip through with interesting pictures and easy-to-digest commentary.
Review from Amazon
Since this is a count down deal, the sooner you get your copy, the more you save!
From July 4 @ 1200AM PDT / 0700 UTC; 78% off!
From July 4th @ 1200PM PDT / 1900 UTC; 56% off!
From July 5 @ 1200AM PDT / 0700 UTC; 34% off!
From July 5th @ 1200PM PDT / 1900 UTC; 12% off!
Sale ends on July 6th @ 1200AM PDT / 0700 UTC.
Prices for the paperback have also been lowered, although not as much as for the electronic version since I have to take the cost of printing into consideration.
There seems to have been a drive – since Gillette first started to sell safety razors – to simplify production and increase the profit margin. I’m convinced that not all ideas got patented, but those which did can make for some fascinating reading.
Just a reminder; if you enjoy reading my snarky commentary on old shaving related patents, old (and some newer) advertisements, shaving history and other shaving related oddities… I have collected the vast majority of links on a separate page here on my blog.
I also have a page that acts as a very basic introduction to the various styles of safety razors for those who are new to the hobby, and a page where I got almost all of the reviews I’ve done over the years collected.
And if you enjoyed my writing on patents, I have also committed a book you can read offline that is available both on Kindle and as a paperback.
Advertisement that ran in the United Farmers of Alberta, Vol. 9, no. 7 (Apr. 1, 1930)
In 1930 Gillette’s new blade – the one with the slot – went on sale, and looks almost like the one we use and love today. Almost, but not quite… since today’s blade is the descendant of the blade that originated with the Probak razor. There differences are slight, and the lawsuit, counter-lawsuit, and corporate takeovers were… complicated. In the end Gillette bought AutoStrop (who owned Probak), but the real story on who gained control of who is something I have not dug into too much.
No soap, water or brush required – sounds like the brushless creams of today, or possible the canned goo that the multinationals sells. It is, however, the tagline is taken from an advert in the British Navy and Army Illustrated magazine, from 1899… singing the praises of the Euxesis shaving cream.
The name Euxesis might come from the greek root “eu” – meaning good – and “xesis” meaning to scrape… so the name might mean “good shave”. The word was made up by Solomon Morgan Lloyd – the man whom allegedly invented the brushless cream – some time before 1850 if my light research is to be trusted. I have not uncovered any patents in his name covering shave creams, so he might have bought the idea of someone else.
There is also some speculations online that Euxesis also inspired the creation of the Burma-Shave shave cream, although I’ve not uncovered firm proof of that.
Taken from Navy and Army Illustrated 1899
Judging by the sources, Euxesis wasn’t a shaving soap, but was instead:
…an emulsion of some one of the expressed oils, together with an certain amount of perfumery; that it is not saponified, is not soluble in water, and does not possess any of the properties of a soap.
Treasury Decisions Under Customs and Other Laws, Volume 34
A lot of the early advertisements I can find online is aimed at British military personnel, which makes sense seeing as how a soldier of the Empire might find himself serving far away from the comforts of home, but a British gentleman wouldn’t dream of giving up the trappings of civilisation – so shaving was a necessity, even if you’re serving somewhere where heating up water for your morning toilet were a senseless waste…
This epochal invention – the Warner Fountain Shaving Brush – carries it’s cream in the handle, as a a fountain pen holds ink. When you turn the control the cream is released in the bristles. Then dip the brush in water and it lathers copiously. To shave this way, a man doesn’t have to soap his brush or his face – or to whip up lather in a shaving mug. This new way appeals espesially to men who find a stick or tube bothersome – ofttimes the tiny tube cap gets lost on the floor. The Warner Fountain Shaving Brush ends all annoyance and tinkering. It’s the team-mate of any razor – and ranks with the safety razor in convenience.
Speaking of the cream; Warner apparently teamed up with the manufacturer of the far-famed Mennen’s Shaving Cream – fresh cartridges with enough cream for two to three months of shaving available at any dealer for a mere 35 cents.
According to the advertisements, the knot itself was a celebrated Rubberset brush – soft and thick bristles set in a bed of vulcanised rubber, guarantied by both the Rubberset makers and by Warner. The knot was detachable and easily sterilised (just “…drop in boiling water”), and the nozzle that delivered the cream into the knot was self sealing to prevent the cream from drying out.
Enough of Warner’s Fountain Brushes must have been sold for the brush to show up on online auctions sites from time to time… but given how pristine the boxes sometimes looks I’m not convinced they saw a lot of use – possible it was better as a Father Day gift when you were out of ideas than an actual daily driver in the bathroom?
In July 1908 Mr Walter H Nicholls walked into the patent office and filed an application for a two piece razor that utilised the springiness of the razor blade to keep the top cap in place, even if he didn’t stress this point in the patent text.
This invention relates to razors of that type in which the blade is detachably secured to a blade-carrying head or holder, and while applicable to various kinds and styles of razors of this character my improvements are particularly adapted and intended to be embodied in safety razors, my object being to provide a simple, practical and inexpensive construction whereby the blade may be quickly and easily secured to and detached from the holder, and will be firmly held thereby when in use.
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.
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.
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.
