For thousands of years man has been fighting the unending battle with his stubborn facial hair. His face has about 25,000 whiskers and grow at a rate of five to six inches (125 to 150 mm) per year. An average man will spend in excess of 3,000 hours of his life in the act of shaving.

The history of shaving takes us back into the stone age, around 100 000 B.C. Ancient cave paintings inspected today will indicate that early man discovered other ways to remove hair from his face; in the beginning, he simply plucked them out using two seashells as tweezers. The earliest shaving razors discovered were flint blades made possibly as far back as 30 000 B.C. Permanent shaving razors are developed, thanks to the invention of metalworking: Copper razors are found available now in both India and Egypt from 3 000 B. C. a custom later adopted by the Greeks and Romans around 330 B.C. during the reign of Alexander the Great.

In Sheffield, England, straight steel razors are produced in 18th century. The bad news is these razors become dull quickly, so they have to be honed and stropped frequently in order to use over and over. In 19th man is starting to use shaving soaps and after-shave lotions.

An open razor has exist for several centuries. And for such long time men were injuring their cheeks with it. And this is what King Camp Gillette, businessman from Wisconsin, was thinking about in 1895 in the mamont when he cut himself. And moreover, he got an idea, that the only functional part of the razor, is the razor-edge. Few years ago his employer, toled him: “Why don´t you devise something that can be used just once and than it has to ge thrown away. The customer will then come back regularly.” Gilette remembered his words when he got the idea to fix to a holder a thin strip of steel with a very sharp edge, which could be thrown away after using it. The problem how to make such thin strip of steel was solved by William Nickerson, mechanician, who has been employed by Gillette as a part time worker. The company manufacturing the first blades The American Safety Razor Company was established in 1901. Nickerson had solved the problem completely in 1902 and in 1903 they started the production. During the first year the sale was disastrous, only 51 shavers and 168 blades. It looked as if Gillette were not going to get rich with his invention. In the next year there was not an obvious reason but the new blade became very popular and so 90 000 shavers and nearly 12,5 million of blades vere sold. A year later the new blades started to be sold with the same succes in Britain. Gillette knew, that his blades were used until they became blund and not just once, as he had figured. This fact was utilized in 1956 by a British firm with long tradition - Wilkinson Sword which was producing swords and later garden equipment, too. The result of this firm´s effort was the first blade made from anticorrosive steal, which should not have been blunt even after several uses.

In the furhter evolution “cassettes” with winded nereon band appeared instead of blades. They looked a bit like a recorder tape. One of its sides was sharpened. After blunting it, it was only rewind and you could continue your razing. Today the idea of one-use blades won again. Or maybe it is rather the idea earn as much as you can. Instead of the simple and cheap blade with double edge you can get the “heads” with one (but often also with two) edges.

Note: Figs. from page http://www.quikshave.com/timeline.htm.