King Camp Gillette

King C. Gillette

Gillette's razor patent dated November 15, 1904

King Camp Gillette (born January 5, 1855 in Fond du Lac , Wisconsin , † July 9, 1932 in Los Angeles ) was an American inventor who is known for inventing the disposable razor blade.

Life

King Gillette was a traveling salesman for many years. At the age of 40, it was a spontaneous idea during the morning shave : He sketched a safety razor with a blade that didn't need to be sharpened. He used a thin piece of steel that is ground on both sides and can be turned over and then thrown away and bought a new one.

Gillette, like his idol William Painter , the inventor of the crown cap , came up with a disposable item for everyday use. It was another six years before he found a partner in 1901 who was able to manufacture the razor blades he had devised . That same year he founded The Gillette Company , which started production in 1903. In the first year 168 blades were sold, in the following year there were already around 90,000 razors and 123,000 blades.

In 1917, the US government gave the company a boost with an order of 36 million razor blades for US soldiers fighting in World War I.

Gillette was established in June 1901, a member of the Federation of the Freemasons , he was alternately lodges Adelphi Lodge in Quincy (Massachusetts) and the Columbian Lodge in Boston at.

Gillette pursued some ideas of utopian socialism and published two books: The Human Drift (1894) and World Corporation (1910). King Camp Gillette died in 1932, before the electric razor era .

Web links

• biography
• Gillette in his early days the inventor of the razor and the company he built survived many close shaves with financial ruin. But his fame never translated into a personal fortune.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Famous Freemasons King Camp Gillette , Homepage: Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon (Retrieved April 25, 2012)