Today, the razor blade king tries to reform
society. The University of Houston's College of
Engineering presents this series about the machines
that make our civilization run, and the people
whose ingenuity created them.
In 1895 King Camp Gillette
was the salesman for the man who invented
cork-lined bottle caps. "Invent something people
use and throw away," the man told him. It'd sure
worked for him.
Gillette wondered what he might invent. It hit him
one morning while he was shaving. He thought up the
safety razor, but he couldn't figure how to make
good disposible blades. For years he struggled.
Finally he met William Nickerson.
Nickerson was a fine inventor. This was a fine
challenge. Nickerson finally saw that he could make
the blade wide. He could let the holder bend it
into position. Then he'd have both accuracy and a
sharp edge. Together, Gillette and Nickerson began
making safety razors in 1903.
The next question was what to name the thing. If
they called a razor blade a Nickerson, that was too
suggestive of nicked skin. In the end Gillette's
name attached to the invention, and his face rode
on the razor blade wrapper. Within a few years
Gillette was a millionaire.
Now that's only the first half of Gillette's story.
Howard Mansfield tells the rest, and it gets very
interesting. The year before he cooked up the
safety razor, Gillette published a book on another
idea entirely. It was terrifying and idealistic.
His Utopian socialistic world would be based on
universal cooperation. All production would be done
efficiently by one great company with all people as
shareholders. "Selfishness would be unknown, and
war would be a barbarism of the past," he wrote.
He imagined all 60 million Americans living in one
great Metropolis. It'd be powered by the Niagara
River. It'd have a hundred million rooms and be
served by vast common dining halls.
Before WW-I he tried to set up his World
Corporation -- this time in the Arizona Territory.
He asked Teddy Roosevelt to be its president. When
that failed, he turned to social reformer and
writer Upton Sinclair. Sinclair arranged a
disastrous meeting between Gillette and Henry Ford.
The two millionaires talked past each other.
Finally, they simply shouted in anger.
Sinclair also helped Gillette with his most cogent
statement -- a book called The People's
Corporation. Even that was naive at best.
Stuart Chase said that his sincerity was deep and
compelling. "... but his solution is quite
untouched by the realities which guard the road to
In his last years Gillette tried to extract oil
from shale. He still had his inventive verve. But
he carried his socialism to the grave. He didn't
see that the simple elegance of his safety razor
was no match for the complexity of human affairs.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
Mansfield, J., The Razor King. American
Heritage of Invention and Technology, Spring
1992, pp. 40-46.
Gillette, K.C., The Human Drift.
Boston: New Era Publishing Co., 1894. (This was the
first of several books in which Gillette set down
his ideas. The dedication reads: "The thoughts
herein contained are dedicated to all mankind; for
to all the hope of escape from an environment of
injustice, poverty, and crime, is equally
Gillette, K.C., The People's
Corporation. New York: Boni and Liveright
Publishers, 1924. (This was Gillette's last book,
30 years after the first. Now the dedication says
simply: "To MANKIND.")
mid-20th century Gillette blade
provided by St. John Antiques, Galveston
From Electricity in Everyday
The Niagara Falls powerhouse in 1904. This is what
Gillette had in mind as the powerhouse for his
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-1997 by John H.
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