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.

Does rinsing your brush out take too long? Is is simply too difficult to get all the soap out? Then what you need is Mr Thomas W Boyle’s patented shaving brush from 1927!

It is an important object of this invention to provide an improved simplified type of shaving brush the handle of which is hollow and is adapted to have one end thereof removably engaged on the mouth of a faucet to admit water into the handle, while the other end of said handle is provided with a passaged brush head through which the water is adapted to be forced under pressure between the brush fibres to thoroughly wash and rinse the same after a shaving operation.

 It seems that Mr Boyle figured the hollow handle was important, and that it was also important to note that the brush engaged the mouth of a faucet… the claim is repeated three times over the space of three short paragraphs in the patent.

Had this been invented today it would probably been marketed via late night infomercials and be labelled “As seen on TV!”, it just gives of that vibe… in the mean time I’ll just have to rinse and shake my brushes.

Back in 1931 Mr Isaac S Mathieu  and Mr Frank B Springer patented a fountain shaving brush… an improved fountain shaving brush no less, meaning someone out there patented at least one earlier one. The idea is much like the shaving brushes for canned goo I blogged about last week, in that the shaving cream should be applied directly to the brush with little in the way of mess.

The principal object of our invention is to provide a shaving brush having a hollow handle with cream dispensing means therein so constructed to t directly inside a tube of shaving cream inserted in the handle, whereby to dispense the cream therefrom, or operate simply inside the handle when the same is filled with cream, as by emptying a tube therein. This makes the brush independent of use with any particular sized tube, and the user can employ his favorite cream without regard to the size of tube.

Judging by the drawing, it’s a shaving cream syringe attached to a brush…  would make for an awesome travel brush, if anyone feels like setting up a production line.