Electric Shavers

The art of shaving has evolved through the ages, with the evidence pointing to the existence of razors as early as the bronze ages. In 1901, the American inventor, King Camp Gillette invented a safety razor which was to be used with disposable blades. His motivation was to reap a profit from the sale of these blades which would be changed frequently. His razors began to gain much popularity but they really took off after World War I when in the USA, beards went out of fashion and the clean shaven look became the accepted norm. This continues until today.

Shaving as a grooming ritual was once again revolutionized in 1928 by another American called Jacob Schick who at first invented a device which could load the blade without you having to touch it. However his ultimate goal was to create a razor which would do away with the messy accompaniments of shaving like shave cream and shave soap which is used with water. He wanted to create a device which would achieve the same results as those that are got from a manual razor but the method employed would be dry shaving.

He used the same principle which is used to cut hair with a pair of scissors to shear hairs off a persons face. However he quickly realized that the scissors do not actually touch the skin when they perform the action of shearing and in order to get a close smooth shave he invented within his razor a small perforated piece of metal called a foil which would actually touch a person's face as the hairs would be able to poke through the foil and then the blade would be able to slice them off. He also faced another impediment to his invention; and this was the lack of availability of miniature electric motors. However evolutions in the field of motors eventually enabled Schick to release his first hand held shaver in 1931 after having patented the design in 1928.Them Remington Rand company then made further developments to the electric razor as they released the Remington electric razor in 1937 and later Philips Laboratories also released a revolving electric shaver whose shaving head consisted of cutters that sliced off the hair that entered the head of the shaver.

The electric shaver which is also called the dry shaver is equipped with a rotating blade. The razor is powered by a small DC motor and a rechargeable battery. These batteries used by electric shavers are generally thought to be nickel cadmium batteries but they cannot be replaced easily as in the case of cordless phones. Some inexpensive electric shavers don’t have batteries and are to be used by plugging them into an AC outlet directly. Most electric shavers have enclosed within them a foil which is made up of layers of metal bands that slice off the extracted length of hair and allow the remainder of the hair follicle to retract and remain below the skin. Yet another type of electric shaver is the rotary type electric shaver that uses circular blade structures to create a smooth shave.

Earlier these dry shavers couldn’t be used with water or shave cream but now many models can be used in conjunction with the usual accouterments associated with the art of shaving. Companies like Braun, Remington and Norelco all make electric shavers.