Jacob Schick’s first electric razor was a cut above flint blades and pumice

American soldier and inventor Jacob Schick, born 140 years ago today patented the first electric razor in 1928.

Jacob Schick who invented the first electric razor in 1928.

WHEN his Irish barber decided to diversify, author and poet Jonathan Swift frothed up the perfect slogan: “Rove not from pole to pole, but step in here, Where nought excels the shaving but — the beer.”

In what appears an inspired move, given the average man spends 3000 hours of his life in a lather, Swift’s barber wanted help with a sign after he decided in the late 1600s to take over a small public-house, where he would continue his grooming service.

Despite the beer and poetic banner, it is unlikely Swift’s favoured barber at Laracor or Trim, in rural Meath, enjoyed the success of another bristle entrepreneur who revolutionised shaving almost 300 years later.

American Jacob Schick, born 140 years ago on September 16, 1877, patented the first electric razor in 1928. After selling an existing razor businesses, his Schick Dry Razor Company produced its first electric razor in 1931. Despite the Great Depression, Schick’s gadget was a huge success, selling more than a million shavers, priced at $25 each, in two years.

Jacob Schick invented the electric razor in 1928.

Born in Ottumwa, Iowa, Schick grew up in Los Cerillos, New Mexico and learned to read and write English, German, and Spanish. His father Valentine was a German immigrant who staked prospector’s claims and established a coal mining company, where Jacob began working as a child. At 16, his father put him in charge of building a railway spur line to transport coal to a smelting forge.

When the Spanish-American War began in 1898, Schick enlisted in the US Army Infantry in Oregon, and with his fluent Spanish was dispatched to the Philippines, earning a commission as a second lieutenant for his ability in organising military construction crews.

After contracting severe dysentery that almost cost his life and required a year-long hospital recovery, Schick was declared fit to return to service, with the stipulation he be stationed in cold climates to reduce the risk of another bout of dysentery. Schick was assigned in 1905 to Fort Gibbon in Alaska, a staging camp for military construction projects on the Yukon and Tanana rivers. In his five years there, he was involved in building telegraph lines in remote, frozen terrain.

Inside George Matthew's barber shop in Glen Innes, in the Northern Tablelands in 1895. Picture: State Library of NSW

A tent barber shaving a man in Australia some time between about 1915 and 1939. Picture: Hood Collection State Library of NSW

A client gets a shave with a cutthroat, or open, razor.

Schick was also obsessively clean-shaven and, like ancient Egyptians, considered a daily shave as a mark of civility and self-respect. The difficulties of shaving at Arctic temperatures with frozen fingers and icy water inspired his invention of two shaving devices. His first prototype, completed in 1921 and patented in 1923, built on his experience with repeating rifles used in the army. A metal injector blade-disposal-and-loading mechanism automatically pushed out a used blade from the razor and replaced it with a new one, avoiding human contact with the cutting edge.

While working on the injector razor blade, in 1921 Schick also developed two pencil sharpeners, marketed as the Pencilaid and Pencilknife. He sold both patents to raise capital for his shaving projects and established the Schick Magazine Repeating Razor Company in 1925. He contracted the American Chain and Cable Company (ACCC) to make them at a plant in Jersey City.

His product enjoyed immediate success but after realising quick profits, in 1928 Schick sold his interest to ACCC to raise money to launch his dry electric shaver, confident it would replace the injector and all wet shaving products. In 1935, after transferring much of his wealth to holding companies in the Bahamas, and pursued for tax evasion, Schick migrated to Canada, where he died of pneumonia in 1937.

An early electric razor, which operated from a lighter socket.

J.J. Hickey of Remington demonstrates an electric shaver on Ted Budrodeen of Mick Simmons tennis professional and coach, at Mick Simmons store in Sydney in 1939. Picture: State Library of NSW

A 1953 advertisement for a Schick electric razor.

Hair removal had progressed from seashell “tweezers” used to pluck out strands to flint blades by 30,000BC. Pumice or depilatory creams made from combinations of arsenic, starch and quicklime were used 6000 years ago by men and women in ancient Egypt. After metal razors appeared in Egypt and India 5000 years ago, barbers became integral to Middle Eastern and European households, where barbers also worked as surgeons.

French barber Jean-Jacques Perret revolutionised hair removal in 1770, when he wrote The Art of Learning to Shave Oneself — La Pogonotomie, with advice on shaving equipment, and also proposed a safety razor. Inspired by a carpenter’s plane, Perret devised a wooden sleeve to enclose the blade of a folding straight razor, so only a small portion protruded.

Almost 80 years later US engineer William Henson lodged a patent application for a razor with a “comb tooth guard or protector”. German-born cutlers Fredrik and Otto Kampfe, then living in New York, described a “safety razor” in their patent application for “improvements in Safety-Razors” in May 1880, and sold them through their Safety Razor Co.

Travelling salesman King Gillette improved on the concept from 1895, when he devised safe, inexpensive and disposable blades, so razors would not have to be sent out for sharpening. Gillette spent six years promoting and selling his idea to backers and toolmakers, securing a “safety razor” patent on November 15, 1904.