King Camp Gillette
Since the man's death in 1932, we have often heard that he, more than any other person, was responsible for "changing the face of humanity." This is none other than the American businessman King Camp Gillette, who patented the very first safety razor in the world in 1901. “I invent something that will only be used once and then thrown away. After that, the buyer will come for the same product again.” This valuable advice William Painter (USA), the inventor of the disposable crown cap, gave it to his seller King Camp Gillette.
Gillette couldn't think of anything that met the "disposable" criterion until one morning in 1895, while shaving, he realized that razors could be disposable.
Men have always shaved: at first with sharp shells or pieces of bone, later with knives, then with steel straight razors, which were made in Sheffield, England in the 18th century. Straight razors had to be sharpened regularly, and Gillette realized that disposable blades would be entirely consistent with Painter's advice. Steelworkers explained to Gillette that it was impossible to make the type of blade he envisioned, but the news did not discourage him, and he founded American Safety Razor.
Without straight razor
Then, with his only employee, William Nickerson, Gillette set about designing a flat, double-sided blade and a T-shaped blade holder. The razors still have the same shape now, more than a hundred years later.
In 1926, Gillette wrote about the safety razor: “There is no other article of personal use that is so generally known and widely used. During my travels, I found it in the northernmost town of Norway and in the heart of the Sahara Desert.” No other invention has had the same impact on shaving, including the electric razor, invented by Colonel Jacob Schick (USA) after he moved to Alaska for health reasons. Convinced that shaving with ice water was unpleasant, Chic tried to come up with dry shaving products.
With mustache guard
The first version of his razor resembled barber scissors and was never released, but the inventor did not stop and created the first successful electric razor, which was released in 1931 by the Chic Dry Shaver company, USA.
In 1959, Wilkinson Sword, England, began producing the first long-life steel blades instead of disposable blades. In 1974, Gillette expanded on his original principle by releasing the first completely disposable blade, the plastic holder of which was designed to be thrown away along with the handle and blade.
King Camp Gillette was a utopian socialist who disapproved of waste - a paradoxical view for the man who invented disposable razor blades. In 1910, he founded the World Corporation to promote global economic planning.
In the same year that Gillette patented his safety razor, another American, Thomas Ferry, invented a mustache guard "designed to keep the mustache away from the lips and prevent food from falling on it when eating." But Ferry was not the first: Harry Jones (England) patented almost the same device in 1872. In addition, before the end of the century, 43 patent applications were filed in the UK for mustache guards, including several devices for cups and spoons.
Dmitry Demyanov, Samogo.Net (
The exact time when men began shaving is unknown, although images of beardless men on cave walls suggest that the beginning of this custom dates back to prehistoric times. Even then, men were actively struggling with facial hair, and not the most humane methods and tools were used: silicon scrapers, animal teeth, mollusk shells, etc. There was another extremely unusual way: unwanted hair they smeared it with clay, like modern wax for hair removal, and when it dried, it was torn off, of course, with the hair.
Flint shaving knives were allegedly used by the Sumerians and ancient Egyptians.
As metallurgy developed in the second millennium BC. e. the Egyptians switched to copper and then bronze razors, and in the 1st millennium BC. e. iron razors appeared. Initially, all razors were arched, but then the Romans developed straight razors.
Around 1100 BC, the prototype of modern razors appeared. According to scientists' research, it was then that people began to use a razor with a handle and one blade.
The idea of a safety razor was first proposed in 1770 by a French barber named Jean-Jacques Perret. The razor of that time looked almost like the straight razor we are used to.
Since the 18th century, the stronghold of razor production has been the English city of Sheffield. Later, a second shaving center appeared - the German city of Solingen. The number of brands and manufacturers that existed at that time was so large that today it is difficult to reconstruct the history of their development. Hundreds of small and large enterprises supplied countless razors to the world market. Razors from Solingen have become famous for their first-class deep sharpening. The rustling rustle they make when shaving has earned them the additional name “singing razors.”
Humanity owes a new stage in the development of shaving to the well-known American - King Camp Gillette. In 1895, this amateur inventor came up with an innovation that buried straight razors and gave life to straight razors - he clamped a blade sharpened on both sides in a handle holder. It took Gillette 8 years to develop and bring the product to market, so his razor appeared on the shelves only in 1903.
In 1926, Colonel Jacobov Schick invented a razor design with two knives - movable and fixed. The moving blade, as you might guess, began to work from a small electric motor. These razors later became known as rotary razors, and they also became the first electric shavers. They went on sale in 1929.
Around 1950, so-called “foil” electric shavers appeared, which were invented by Max Brown - model S50. This razor was distinguished by a fixed mesh blade, which was bent in a semicircle and covered the entire area of the shaving head. A movable knife adjacent to the inside moved from edge to edge of the head and cut off the hairs. This razor differed from rotary razors in that it did not cause skin irritation.
For most of the 20th century, the life of Soviet people was harsh and meager. The men shaved with straight razors and brass razors with Voskhod blades. During menstruation, women used gauze or tore old sheets into shreds. And to maintain physical fitness, many houses had a horizontal bar hanging in the doorway. Sanitary napkin, sports equipment and floating head razors came to us only in the 90s - along with perestroika. Meanwhile, in the West, people have been enjoying the benefits of civilization, invented during the First World War, for almost a century.
Safety razor
"Looking in the mirror, I began to shave, but discovered that my razor was hopelessly dull. I couldn’t sharpen it myself; I had to go to a hairdresser or a sharpening shop. I looked at the razor in confusion. And then an idea was born in my head. Razor a machine with replaceable blades. I saw it entirely, in one second, asked myself dozens of questions and answered each of them. Everything happened as if in a dream...”
This is how King Camp Gillette, the founder of the Gillette Company, recalled the moment of invention. This was in the mid-1890s. King Gillette was then living in Baltimore and working as a salesman for the company of William Painter, the inventor of the crown bottle cap. Safety razors already existed then - back in 1771, the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Perret made a razor in which only the edge of the blade touched the skin. However, Perret's model was imperfect, and in Everyday life men used open-blade razors. This was dangerous - barbers often injured their clients, and the wounds became infected.
Gillette proposed the following: a machine consisting of two metal plates, with a blade between them - fixed in such a way that only two edges are exposed outside. And a removable handle attached perpendicular to the machine. The design seemed so simple to Gillette that he decided to immediately get down to business. He went to a hardware store, where he bought a roll of steel tape for making clock springs, tools and paper for drawing.
The inventor was confident of success: a roll of tape cost 16 cents, and 500 blades came out of it. However, it turned out that the blades needed thin, durable and cheap steel, for the production of which in those years there was no technology or equipment. It took six years of experimentation, $25,000, and the help of engineer William Nickerson before Gillette was able to bring his insight to life. In 1901, he patented the world's first razor with a replaceable blade - the Safety Razor. And in 1903, the first safety razors went on sale.
Buyers did not like the new product. In the first year, only 168 blades and 5 razors were sold. It was a failure - so deafening that Gillette, leaving the company in the care of friends, moved to London, where he was offered a high salary as a traveling salesman. But next year - thanks good reviews in the press - the Gillette Company's business began to improve. In 1904, the company sold 91,000 machines and 123,000 blades, and by 1908, sales exceeded $13 million.
Truly safety razors became in demand during the First World War. Disposable blades were exactly what the soldiers needed at the front. Cheap, convenient, hygienic. The military command liked razors because they could save money on regimental barbers. In 1917, when America entered the war, King Camp Gillette entered into a contract with the US Department of Defense to supply safety razors to the troops. For the Gillette Company, this year was a record year - according to the most conservative estimates, 1 million razors and 120 million replacement blades were sold.
In 1921, Gillette's 20-year patent for the invention expired. Safety razors began to be produced in all countries of the world, and they became firmly established in men's everyday life. In the 1930s, plastic machines were very fashionable and were simply thrown away after use. In the late 1940s, razors equipped with cassettes with built-in blades appeared. And 10 years later - razors with a movable head. It is estimated that more than a billion razors are sold worldwide today, with replacement blade sales exceeding 40 billion. Which once again confirms the correctness of the words spoken by King Camp Gillette shortly before his death in 1932: “Of all the great inventions, the disposable razor is the greatest of the little ones.”.
 |
Sanitary napkin
Let's say right away: until the middle of the 19th century, women did not wear pantaloons or panties. And this is understandable - the main job of women was to give birth to children, so for most of their lives women were pregnant, dressing in loose skirts that easily changed size as their bellies grew. On the days of menstruation, the lack of underwear created many difficulties. However, women somehow got out of the situation. How exactly is not known for certain. It is believed that residents Ancient Egypt they rolled tampons from papyrus, and Greek and Roman women made tampons from sheep's wool. In the Middle Ages, European ladies used fabric bandages, which were attached with ribbons to a belt or corset.
Women owe the appearance of modern sanitary pads to the First World War. It so happened that at the beginning of 1914, employees of a small American paper factory, Kimberly-Clark, visited pulp and paper mills in Germany, Austria and the Scandinavian countries to exchange experiences. There they noticed cellucotton - new material, which absorbed moisture five times better than cotton, and cost half as much. The Americans took it home, and when the United States entered World War I in 1917, the Kimberly-Clark company began producing dressings for the army from it - at a rate of 100-150 pieces per minute.
Military doctors really liked cellucotton, but nurses liked it even more. They came up with the idea of making menstrual pads out of it, which they put into tight-fitting pantaloons (the ladies in those years had already shortened them and stripped them of flounces and lace). Therefore, when the war ended in 1918, representatives of Kimberly-Clark bought the remains from the military dressings. And two years later, a completely new hygiene product appeared on the shelves of American pharmacies - Kotex, feminine pads, consisting of forty thin layers of cellulose wadding.
True, selling the new product turned out to be difficult. At that time, salespeople in pharmacies were mostly men, and women were embarrassed to ask them for pads. Then Kimberly-Clark resorted to a trick. They installed two boxes at the checkout. From one the customer took a package of pads, and into the other she put 50 cents. If suddenly the pharmacy did not have such boxes, you could simply say “Kotex” and get the goods.
By the way, at the same time, in the early 20s, one of the company’s employees - a certain Bert Furness - had the idea to iron the gasket with a hot iron. The result was the first thin and soft disposable paper tissue called Kleenex. Since then, for almost a century, these two things - a scarf and pads - have been in almost every woman's handbag.
Pilates
"The body is created by the mind"- these are the favorite words of Joseph Pilates, a sports trainer who created a popular fitness training method. Pilates was born in 1883 in Germany, in the city of Mönchengladbach. IN early childhood he suffered from rickets, asthma and rheumatism. At the age of 10, having decided to improve his health, he began actively doing gymnastics and by the age of 15 he had pumped up his muscles so much that he began working part-time in art schools as a model for anatomical drawings. In 1912, Pilates moved to England, where he trained professionally in boxing and taught self-defense to police officers at Scotland Yard.
The First World War found Joseph in Britain. Together with other Germans who were in the country at that time, he was interned on the Isle of Man. He spent all four years of the war in a concentration camp. It was there, based on gymnastics, skiing, yoga, acrobatics, dancing and weightlifting, that he developed his own training system, later called Pilates. There, from improvised means, such as the frame of an iron bed, he made the first fitness equipment. During World War I, training on these simulators not only helped Joseph himself survive, but also saved the lives of his fellow prisoners.
After the war, Pilates returned to Germany, where he trained policemen and soldiers of the German army, and in 1925 he moved to New York. There, in the building of the New York City Ballet Theater, he opened a school healthy image life. In the 1930-1940s, the Pilates studio was very popular. It was visited by ballet and film stars: George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Gregory Pack, Katharine Hepburn.
 |
Pilates gained worldwide fame in the early 1970s (after Josef’s death), when dancer Romana Kritsanovska opened a studio in Los Angeles and John Travolta, Madonna and Kristen Scott-Thomas and many other Hollywood actors began training using this method.
Yes, people started shaving a very long time ago, back in the Stone Age. It was then that, for reasons unknown to date, men began to actively fight facial hair. However, one can assume what motivated them: the desire to separate from the animal world by removing the external resemblance to animals wearing wool, or the eternal female capriciousness: perhaps primitive women were not too different from modern ones and did not want to spoil their delicate skin.
Be that as it may, the fact remains: men were getting rid of their mustaches and beards en masse. Moreover, the tools chosen were not the most humane: scrapers, stone knives, mollusk shells (which were either sharpened or used as tweezers). There was another absolutely wild way: unwanted hair was smeared with clay, and when it dried, it was torn off. With hair.
How the heroes felt at that moment... most likely, they felt themselves like heroes.
Looking at their men, the women decided not to stand aside. About 5-6 thousand years ago, women came up with the first “cream” for depilation, which included the most terrible ingredients: arsenic, starch and lime. Unfortunately, the consequences of using such a “cocktail” are unknown to us.
But the Stone Age changed. The Iron Age brought not only changes in society, but also significant improvements in shaving devices. People quickly appreciated the strength of the metal, and from about 3000 BC. Metal razor tools became an item of constant use (after all, stone tools were very short-lived). Created approximately 3,500 years ago by Scandinavian craftsmen, razors are considered the most complex and amazing razors of the ancient world. They were found in excavations in the Danish Burial Hills. On their blades, people reproduced mythological scenes using embossing and engraving, and the handles were shaped like a horse's head.
The prototype of modern razors appeared around 1100 BC. According to scientists' research, it was then that people began to use a razor with one blade and a handle. The military played a special role in the history of the development of the razor. In particular, the great commander Alexander the Great was an ardent supporter of shaving, and the soldiers imitated their idol: they wore short haircuts and had a clean-shaven face. By the way, short haircuts had a purely practical value - this way the enemy could not grab the warrior by the long forelock and hit him.
According to scientists, it was then that the word “barbarian” appeared, from the Latin “barba” - “beard”. And that was the name given to those peoples who wore beards. Only sailors did not become adherents of shaving - after all, at sea it is difficult to drag a razor across your face and not have problems later. The likelihood of cuts and their corrosion by salty sea water increased significantly, which is why many sailors wore beards. Others, if possible, visited barber shops.
Barbers at that time occupied a special place in the cultural life of cities. They were something of a social establishment where they learned and discussed last news. Roman barbers made their own modification of the razor, which was called the Roman razor. Other razors had an arc-shaped cutting edge, but the Roman razor was a straight blade with a rounded edge and a handle. In the manufacture of this razor, soft and hard metals were forged. There were soft layers on the outside, which made the blade flexible and elastic, and the inner hard metal provided sharpness. The blade was hardened and then sharpened using sandstone whetstones.
Despite such relatively complex technological solutions, the Roman straight razor was short-lived, quickly rusted and became dull. The barber could easily injure his client with such a razor. Therefore, all barbers could help the client in such an unpleasant incident: they applied masks from aromatic ointment or made a rag compress with special oil and vinegar. Finally, Roman barbers began to use water and a whetstone to sharpen their blades.
There is a version that this was facilitated by the Greek rich man Publicus Tisinius Maenas, who brought barbers from the island of Sicily to Rome. However, only one thing is important: now shaving and razors have become more advanced. The Roman straight razor has gained popularity around the world. Of course, over time, inexorable progress quietly did its job. The changes also affected razors. Externally, the razors remained the same, only the material and processing methods changed.
Europeans became aware of the secrets of damask steel from India and Persia, and Europe itself reached great heights in the production of welding steel. Toledo and Damascus steel took places of honor. The processes of forging, hardening and sharpening blades are also being improved. Razor is thriving.
The idea of a safety razor was first expressed in 1770 by a hairdresser from France, Jean-Jacques Perret, in his treatise “The Art of Learning to Shave Oneself (La Pogonotomie”). The razor of that time looked almost like the straight razor we are used to - in the 17th century they began to fold it after use, hiding the blade.
Among the many manufacturers of razors, the history of which cannot be traced due to their large number, in the 18th century two cities occupied leading positions in the production of razors - Sheffield in England and Solingen in Germany. Razors from Solingen were even called “singing”: thanks to their deeper sharpening, the blade of these razors made a characteristic rustling sound when sliding over the skin.
However, judging by the fact that today most people use safety razors, even “singing” did not save straight razors. And the well-known American King Camp Gillette contributed to the decline of these razors. In 1895, this amateur inventor came up with an innovation that killed straight razors and gave life to straight razors: he clamped a double-edged blade into a handle holder.
Gillette patented his invention, which he called the “safety razor,” and actually became a monopolist, because his company did not sell licenses. It took Gillette 8 years to develop and bring the product to market, so his razor appeared on the shelves only in 1903.
Despite the fact that the innovation was not durable, the success of the razor was deafening: already in the next year of sales (in 1904), the number of razors sold rose to a record 12.4 million copies. Customer demand for the razor allowed Gillette to open an office in London and sell his razors to Europeans.
In 1910, an inventor from America, Willis G. Shockey, patented a kind of electric razor. 
The design had a hand-operated flywheel that caused the blade to move around its axis. The invention gained great popularity among the male population and occupied a leading position until consumers recognized the first electric razor.
It often happens that brilliant things are invented by people who are completely far from the sphere to which their inventions relate. This happened with the electric razor - it was invented by a military man, although the improvement of the razor did not begin entirely with its electrification. According to legend, US Colonel Jacob Schick was so inspired by the store that he decided to make similar changes to the razor. Replaceable blades were inserted into the handle of the razor, which automatically replaced the blade according to the principle of replacing cartridges in a magazine.
The blades were sold in cassettes that were inserted into the razor. It is not surprising that Chic called his razor “Magazine repeating razor” (“Razor is a copy of the store”). This was in 1921. And in 1926, the same colonel came up with a razor design with two knives - movable and fixed. The moving blade, as you might guess, began to work from a small electric motor. Through a stationary mesh blade with slits, the hairs fell under a movable knife.
These razors later became known as rotary razors, and they also became the first electric shavers. Colonel Chic's electric shavers went on sale in 1929. However, they did not cause wild delight and resounding success among consumers, to the great chagrin of the military entrepreneur. People still used Willis Shockey's imperfect razors and bought Chic's creation rather poorly.
The colonel did not blame the villainous fate and decided to team up with a more successful competitor. Thus, a company called “Schick Dry Shaver, Inc.” was born. In 1939, the well-known Philips introduced improvements to the Chic razor. Firstly, the Philishave 7730 model had not two blades, but three. And thanks to the larger number of holes, the razor did not “rip out” hairs. Despite the efforts of specialist developers, the first real success of the electric razor came in the 1970s thanks to improvements introduced by the American company Remington.
In 1950, so-called “foil” electric shavers appeared, the creation of Max Brown - S50. This razor was distinguished by a fixed mesh blade, which was bent in a semicircle and covered the entire area of the shaving head. A movable knife adjacent to the inside moved from edge to edge of the head and cut off the hairs. This razor differed from rotary razors in that it did not cause skin irritation. In the Soviet Union, the first electric shavers appeared in the 1950s and were produced in Kharkov. They were extremely popular among Soviet citizens, and today electric shavers continue to be produced in Ukraine.
The stainless steel razor appeared in 1956. It was created by the British company Wilkinson Sword, which was founded back in 1772 and was intended for the production of bladed weapons.
A real revolution was made by the creation of Marcel Bic, the man who proposed making everything disposable. In 1975, he introduced the world to the disposable razor. The machine with a permanent head had a very low price (like everything disposable), was easy to use and guaranteed a clean shave. It makes no sense to talk about the success of a new product: we still use disposable razors, the main advantage of which is the affordable price.
Disposable razors and electric razors failed to completely defeat the straight razor that “ruled” for centuries, although they lost popularity for some time. Of all the well-known companies in Solingen, only one remains operating today - Dovo. This company was once able to acquire the Bismarck brand, which itself symbolizes high quality blades. Of course, the company was struggling, especially in the mid-1940s.
And in the next decade it was even worse: then only 35 people were involved in the production of straight razors. At this rate, by 1987, Dovo was able to produce only 7 thousand razors. However, now there is a tendency towards a return to the popularity of “fears”, which have become an accessory for stylish men and women. a good gift for them too. So a straight razor may well take its rightful place in the market. After all, it all started with her.
We continue the history of shaving, which, as it turns out, has its hair roots going back hundreds of thousands of years. In this issue we will understand the intricacies of the history of beards and shaving in Russia, the appearance of a normal razor from Gillette and the first mechanical and electric razors.
Beard and shaving in our country
After the baptism of Rus', the mandatory wearing of a beard was established for any Orthodox man. It doesn’t matter how thick or vice versa a person’s beard is - the most important thing is that it is present. At the time of the split into two branches of churches, the Orthodox Greeks brought forward an accusation against the Romans that they had violated one of the rules prohibiting barber shaving in the Holy Scriptures: “Do not shave your locks...” (Lev.19:27). The Romans paid more attention to hygiene, and the Orthodox paid more attention to the difficulty of following all the rules. Wearing a beard was enshrined in law, and barber shaving was considered a sign of sodomy. For “touching” mustaches and beards, a hefty fine of 12 manes was imposed; for comparison, I’ll say that killing a person cost three times more. Therefore, the beard is a third of the person. This ban lasted for almost seven hundred years. Barbers were considered effeminate, pederasts, and for some reason compared to cats and dogs.
The 19th century, or rather its end, was marked by the legendary razors from the Germans, the Kempe brothers, who patented their invention in 1880. The blade was sandwiched between two strips of forged steel. The big disadvantage of the blade was that it required a constant point. Shaving kits began to be actively sold, which included blades for the whole week (for greater hygiene), a razor and a special attachment for the blade to make it safer. From a modern point of view, another extremely dangerous razor that can cut you just by looking at it. But dudes from Europe in the 19th century managed to shave with such razors and not die, and you complain that you cut yourself from the razor. But the first razors from Kempe did not suggest that razors could be changed at all; a set of blades for the whole week is an already improved version of this razor.
Razor King King Camp Gillette
Yes, dude, Gillette is not the name of the company, but the name of the person who gave us disposable machines with replaceable blades. Honor and praise to him! King founded this business, which brought him billions, when he was already 50 years old. Before that, he worked as a traveling salesman. Since childhood, the dude, whose father was a sort of local gloomy genius, has been inventing and making things. Traveling all over the country with goods from a hardware store, Gillette developed incredible skills of persuasion. All this time he was inventing something, selling it and simply coming up with all sorts of nonsense, showing himself not only as an excellent businessman, but also as a smart inventor. It only dawned on Gillette in 1885, when he was holding a Kempe razor in his hand. It dawned on him that only the blade works in the razor, and everything else is useless for shaving. He realized that a razor simply had to be light and cheap, but the blades had to be expensive, sharp, relatively strong and... replaceable. But none of the specialists of that time in matters of metallurgy could offer Gillette steel that was cheap and fully satisfied his requirements. For six years, the future billionaire searched for investors and a solution to the problem until he met mechanical engineer William Nickerson. The dude managed to solve King's dilemma and came up with a technology for strengthening and specially sharpening the blade.
Then the dudes received a patent for their invention and founded their own company. But things were still not going well. But Gillette's gift of persuasion was able to attract investors. At first the machines were sold reluctantly. In the first year they sold only 51 machines and 168 blades. But here in next year more than one hundred thousand Americans bought new machines, and profits exceeded $13 million. Subsequently, the company began to sell more than 3 million machines a year, making Gillette the richest man. The First World War and other wars contributed a lot to the growth of popularity of razors; the machines were cheap, convenient and were received with a bang by the soldiers different countries. The model itself of selling the main product at a reduced price (machines), but inflating the cost of consumable goods (blades), became extremely popular in the future. You can cite, for example, the sale of game consoles. Most often, the cost of the console itself is underestimated, while the cost of games is ungodly overpriced. Closer to 1970, disposable plastic razors were invented. You probably saw the very model of a T-shaped machine with two twisting halves at your parents’ house, I even still have it.
Women also decided to shave. If hair was not always removed from the armpits, hair from the legs, arms and part of the pubic area had to be removed, as men became more demanding about cleanliness. T-shaped machine He was good to everyone, but he still left cuts. Gillette also released a model for a female audience - Milady Decolletée, which was more convenient to use.
The Gillette razor changed dramatically only in 1960, when blades began to be made of stainless steel. In 1971, the traditional T-shape razor was replaced by the Trac II double-blade razor. Availability more blades made shaving much more convenient and less energy-consuming. At the same time, the company invented special shaving soaps, creams and gels. At first they were appreciated more girls, but then the men also caught up.
Electric razors
For most comrades, this is a very dubious matter, although many really like it. The first electric razor appeared in 1920; it had an unrealistically long “tail” of wire. The first prototype was developed by Colonel Yakov Shik. He was unhappy that traditional shaving requires water and cream, which are not always available. The first razors required two hands and were extremely uncomfortable. The year 1927 was marked by the fact that Yakov finally invented a normal, comfortable razor with moving blades. The first sales, as in the case of Gillette, did not bring Chic much money. The razor cost $25, which today is $350. Frankly, not little. In the first year they sold 3,000 units. By 1937, Chic had sold 1,500,000, earned $20 million, and opened up the dry shaving market.
In 1940, the first convenient razors for women appeared, since hairiness peeked out indecently from fashionable nylon tights, like grass through asphalt. In the 50s, rotary electric razors appeared, which were much safer than regular ones. But in 1960, the Remington company, which also produced women's razors, released a razor that worked both from batteries and from the mains, allowing the batteries to be charged from an outlet. The widespread use of plastics and the discovery of new compounds has made it possible to significantly reduce the cost of electric razors.
Until the present moment, nothing radically new has happened in the history of shaving, except for all sorts of laser and photoepilation, after which nothing grows like after a nuclear explosion. The number of blades and types of electric razors change. Hipsters are returning to shaving with blade razors and Kempe razors, as if they shave cooler.
