1931: The first practical, electric shavers go on sale. They’re definitely a cut above their clumsy predecessors.

The gizmos were the brainchild of Jacob Schick. He served in the U.S. Army in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War and after. Schick developed dysentery in the tropics, and after a yearlong recovery, the Army transferred him to Alaska for his health.

Schick was a key member of the team that strung more than a thousand miles of military telegraph lines into the harsh Alaskan interior. He also designed the General Jacobs Boat, for use in shallow water.

After retiring from the Army in 1910, Schick explored for gold in Alaska and British Columbia. He liked the adventure but hated shaving in the 40-below weather. (At that exact temp, BTW, it doesn’t matter whether the weather is measured in Celsius or Fahrenheit.)

When he broke his ankle and had to stay in camp to recuperate, Schick set his mind to devising a more comfortable way to shave. He devised rough plans, so to speak, for a shaving head at the end of a flexible cable that was powered by an external motor. He sent the idea to manufacturers, and they quickly rejected the idea.

Schick returned to active duty when the United States entered World War I. As a lieutenant colonel, he headed the Army’s intelligence and criminal-investigation unit in England.

After the war, he wanted to improve and market his electric shaver invention, but needed capital. So he applied the concept of the ammunition clip to the razor with the Magazine Repeating Razor. It was a forerunner of the injector razor: You could load and unload the blade without risk of cutting your fingers.

He sold that business off to return to the electric shaver. With exquisite timing, he put his first electric shavers on the market in 1929, just in time for the stock market collapse and ensuing Great Depression. The early models didn’t sell well. The design was still a clumsy contraption with a heavy motor connected by a metal cable to the reciprocating shaving head.

Business was so bad that the Schicks had to mortgage their home to get money to keep the company going. But Schick figured out how to make his product a success by making it handy.

He got rid of the flexible cable and put a small electric motor inside the same unit as the shaving head. The entire apparatus was encased in sleek, black bakelite and fit comfortably in your hand. An electric appliance cord supplied power to the motor, which had to be kick-started by a turn-wheel switch on the unit.

Schick set up a factory in Stamford, Connecticut. The new model went on sale in New York City on March 18, 1931.

They sold for $25 each (that’s about $360 in today’s money). About 3,000 moved the first year, and sales increased until 1.5 million were in users’ hands by 1937.

Despite early claims, they didn’t shave closer than a wet steel blade, but the shavers were convenient. And when you factor in the cost of blades, shaving cream and other appurtenances needed for a wet shave, fans didn’t think it seemed so expensive after all. Especially when prices dropped as competitors like Remington, Sunbeam, Philips, Zenith and even Gillette got in on the market.

Schick got rich and retired to Canada. But his lingering health problems caught up with him, and he died in 1937. He said the lifespan of a man who shaved correctly every day would be 120 — he lived less than half that time.

Source: Electric Shaver Page

Image: Schick’s earliest prototype for the electric shaver was a bulky, two-handed affair. (National Housewares Manufacturers Association)

This article first appeared on Wired.com March 18, 2009.