Over on Paleofuture (a fun blog I recommend by the way) I stumbled over a electric razor (and face massager) from 1926:

Allegedly the vibrating blade should overcome the “pulling effect that an ordinary razor blade has on the beard” – not that I’ve noticed any tugging since I switched to traditional razors – but what I found most interesting is the way the back-and-forth movement of a solenoid is turned into a side-to-side movement by a clever linkage.

The device was claimed to be “entirely water-proof” and “practically free from troubles of all kinds”, hopefully the later included the kind of trouble you could get if the handle wasn’t as water-proof as claimed… this US manufactured wonder-razor was supposed to be hooked into the light-fixture for that 110VAC 60Hz goodness.

As an added bonus you could take the razor head off and substitute a massage arm, allowing you to use the device for facial and scalp massaging. According to the ads, men as well as women had “discovered the satisfaction of using the Vibro-Shave Electric Safety Razor.”…

According to a website I stumbled over, the Vibro-Shave electric razor was manufactured by the Electric (Safety) Razor Corp., which was located in Long Island City (NY, USA), in the later half of the 1920s. Same site claims there should still be many Vibro-Shave razors on the market, although a quick search didn’t reveal much more than one:

A bit of digging revealed that the patent was filed in 1924 by Mr Saul Shaler, and has long since expired. The patent drawing is pretty nice though, and does a good job of explaing the lever arrangement that allowed the solenoid to drive the blade.

The 1924 patent was an improvement (according to Mr Shaler) on a 1923 patent, mostly in the construction of the handle. The Original 1923 patent also includes a drawing of the facial massager.

Mr Shaler was also granted a patent on an improvement on his Vibro-Shaver in 1929 – in other words towards the end of production – covering an improvement in the razor head.

Taken together these three patents offers a fascinating glimpse into the development of this largely forgotten razor and/or electrical hazard.

When the canned goo was the hot new stuff, people realised that unlike brush and soap – which you could use with a scuttle – the hot new stuff soon got cold… and cold lather can make for a miserable shave.

However Mr Henry Allen Wilson came up with a cunning solution, built into the very can of goo that the multinationals were pushing, without the clumsy contraptions that previous patents had relied on

To overcome all such methods and means as set forth above or other means of adding moisture and heat to the lather as it is dispensed from a container for use, I propose by the means herein disclosed and described to produce in a confined area properly heated and moistened lather from the ordinary and usual aerosol can or bottle, adequate moisture laden lather without adding to the expense or complexity of the ordinary aerosol dispensing container or to the lather-producing liquid within the dispensing container.

Or, as I see it, he floated the cap in the sink one day and realised that if he could keep it from capsizing, any goo added to the cap would indeed be heated up. Since plastic is less dense than water, stability can be achieved by adding water ballast to the cup without sacrificing floatation. Squirt some goo on top and it will indeed be heated (and dampened, which may or may not be a good thing). Or as Mr Wilson states it:

By reference to the sectional view in FIG. 2 it will also be seen that the body of lather L rests on the surface of the hot water within the cup by which it is constantly moistened and heated during use. It will be obvious that the quantity of moisture may be varied as desired by merely adding the hot water from the cup as the shaver successively dips into the lather and water as he applies same to his beard in normal preshave fashion.

I suspect the downfall of the patent lays in the last cited sentence – most “modern” shavers will simply squirt goo in their hand or face and rub it around, not “dip into” the lather. And thus they’ll have to deal with cold lather year round… poor fellows.

Canned goo can be messy… as can brushless creams. But fear not, Mr P Solaini’s patented shaving cream applicator was invented to solve that problem – if a problem it is.

It is well known that when the spreading of lotions to the face or body requires the use of the hand the operation is both wasteful and extremely messy. Brushes have been used for this purpose, however they are not satisfactory in applying an even coating of the lotion or shaving cream to the face or body and, additionally, such brushes are extremely expensive.

So far Mr Solaini… my experience is that brushes are just the thing for applying an even layer, and there are a large number of great-but-inexpensive brushes available 50 years after the patent.

[B]rushes … do not readily adapt themselves to the wide variety of lotions and shaving creams now available to the consumer. … The gaseous bomb dispensed lotions, creams or shaving soaps are soft and require gentle application to the skin while the creams dispensed in jars or tubes are much thicker…

Okay, you got us there – a shaving brush is often not that great for the canned goo. So what is the solution?

…the present invention comprises various forms of a rubber or plastic material applicator which is fiat in conguration and either an integral handle member or an adjustable handle member cooperating with slot and gripping means on the applicator to provide different forces and angles of applying a spreading force from the hand to the spreading end of the applicator.

 Uhm… that is a spatula. I got several in my kitchen drawer but while it might be just the thing for not making a mess from the canned goo, I really don’t see how I can use it to whip up a good lather from a tube of shaving cream.

Are you too tired in the morning to remember to use both your razor and your toothbrush? Is travelling with two things too much, not to mention having to remember to bring both shaving cream and tooth paste? Worry not, even the terminally lazy can shave (and brush their teeth) with this wonderful 1987 invention by Mr Kyu H. Kwak!

A razor and toothbrush assembly comprises a body member having chambers disposed therein and handles slidably disposed thereon, the chambers containing shaving cream and toothpaste dispensers disposed therein whereby shaving cream and toothpaste disposed in the shaving cream and toothpaste dispensers are dispensed from the shaving cream and toothpaste dispensers by pressing the handles against the shaving cream and toothpaste dispensers, respectively.

If that legalese from the patent was a little hard to understand, let me put it in simpler words:

A handle, with a razor head on one end and a tooth brush on the other. In said handle, room for two tubes of shave cream and tooth paste respectively. Internal passages that let you squeeze tooth paste into the tooth brush, and shave cream out of the razor head. And that’s about it.

To me it seems more like a novelty item, or possible something the airline gives you when they loose your luggage, but it might have a niche as a travel product for people who love to travel light. Not sure how good of a shave you would get by applying shave cream directly to the razor though.

Just make sure you don’t mix up the tubes… tooth paste probably gives lousy shaves, and shave cream is not tasty. Speaking of mixing things up, you better make sure you’re awake when using it as well; while I joke about taking the fur of my teeth from time to time, I’m fairly sure I don’t want to jab a razor in my mouth.

Following up on last weeks invention, today I found a similar concept utilizing an “aerosol actuated push button shaving cream dispenser” – better known as canned goo.

Or to quote the abstract:

A disposable combination razor and shaving cream dispenser having an aerosol actuated push button shaving cream dispenser and a non-removable cap having a razor blade at the upper end and a pushbutton adapted to engage the push button of the dispenser. In this manner, the dispenser body may be used as a handle when shaving and the cream may be dispensed without removing the cap from the dispenser as needed to be applied by the hand into which the cream is dispensed.

Is carrying both razor and shaving cream just too much? Too much to recall where you put down two items in your bathroom? Worry not – there is a disturbing amount of patents taken out combining the two, and today’s patent was granted as recently as 1988:

A disposable razor includes a handle having a compartment for containing a limited amount of shaving cream/gel, with the amount of the shaving cream/gel predetermined to be quantitatively the appropriate amount usable during the relatively short life of the disposable razor. The handle includes provisions for inserting and removing a container for the cream or gel in one embodiment and other embodiments disclose different elements for dispensing the cream or gel from the container through the bottom of the handle.

As mentioned, it is not a terrible original idea, but apparently this way of doing it was novel enough to grant a patent for.

Like shaving with a brush? Don’t like rubbing it on your face, or annoyed that the modern shaving brush only requires one hand to operate? Then look no further, Mr Max Shers 1906 patented hand cranked shaving brush is just what you need!

The combination of a frame having a handle, a wheel in the frame, a brush having a projecting stud at the back, eccentrically connected to the wheel, a pair of wheels geared together and having crank pins, a bar connecting the pins and having a bearing through which the stud extends, and means to turn the wheels.
The combination of a cupped casing having a handle connected at one side thereof, a wheel in the casing, a brush eccentrically connected to the wheel, so that as the wheel rotates the brush revolves, a hand crank on the back of the casing, a pair of wheels geared together and connected to the crank, and having projecting studs, and a cross ball having a pivotal connection to the studs and the brush.

The gear train shown on the patent drawing will give the brush an interesting, mesmerising motion at least – it will rotate around it’s own axis, while at the same time orbiting the centre of the brush frame. In short, it is a spirograph for your face.

Yet another lets-add-the-cream/soap/foam-directly-into-the-brush brush… this one invented by Mr Aubry F Stepelton back in 1929. Like all of these inventions it consists of a brush with a hole in the base, and a way to press the lather maker media into the brush.

In accordance with the present invention l the handle of the brush comprises a barrel erably engaged between said annular member and the sleeve of the cartridge and the barrel is preferably provided, at its lower end, with a part or member adapted to form a continuation of the sleeve of said cartridge to form a uniform bore for said piston.

 In short it is a lipstick holder mated to a brush. It lacks some of the over the top flair some of the other self lathering shaving brushes have.

Back in 1917, the shaving brush anthrax scare was in full bloom. This may explain why Mr John T Cooney took it upon himself to invent and patent a sanitary, disposable shaving brush.

It is the principal object of this invention to provide a shaving brush which will fully answer the purpose of such brushes in all general respects, yet which may be produced at such a low cost as to make it possible to discard the brush after a’single using thereof, thus making for increased sanitation in barber shops and similar-establishments, where, ordinarily, a brush is used repeatedly for different customers.

Even without the anthrax, it don’t actually sound like a bad idea – the sanitary standards were not on the level we’re used to today, and brushes made from natural materials usually don’t respond well to  repeated visits to an auto-clave or baths in high test barbicide (which by the way was invented much later).
A number of steps were taken to ensure brushes that were cheap, easy to use, attractive for a barber, and yet of a decent enough quality:

The invention further contemplates facilitating the production of a lather by impregnating the brush portion in a suitable soap solution during the course of manufacture so that it is only necessary to dip the brush in water and then apply to the face.

 The inventive idea involved is capable of receiving a variety of mechanical express believed to be a preferred form of the invention which consists of a plurality of strands of fibrous material bunched together and bound intermediate the ends thereof with a suitable wire or cord which is drawn tightly so as to assist in maintaining the ends’of the strands together and in even relation. In order to provide a rigid handle for the brush the strands, after being bound together by the cord or wire, are given a torsional twist as indicated and the strands are then bent upon themselves or doubled and the doubled portion thereof is bound by a cord or wire adjacent to the intermediate portions of the strands, thus forming the handle. The ends of the strands are brought together by the doubling thereof to form the brush portion.

Since the present brush, when completed, consists of a plurality of the strands which are each continuous and unbroken, both ends of each strand are presented to act in the forming of lather on the face of the user; and since the several strands are doubled and bound together at two points, the tendency toward shedding of the strands from the brush during use is reduced to a minimum. 

Overall not a bad idea at all, in my opinion. The end of the anthrax scare probably knocked the bottom out of the market though, even though the basic idea would also make for a nice semi-disposable travel brush.