Every morning, man puts a weapon to his face to cut away the night. Man has battled his beard since early times, and he hasn't always had the luxury of a good disposable razor. So if you think it's a chore to slather on shaving cream every day, just imagine what early man had to endure.
Before the metal ages, he scraped away at his face with stone, flint or clamshells. Prehistoric cave paintings depict men pulling their hair from their bodies using shells as tweezers.
Later came crude razors made from copper and other metals. When the Danish Mound Graves were unearthed in Scandinavia, archeologists discovered leather-sheathed razors etched with mythological scenes. The ancient Egyptians shaved both their beards and their heads, and the Romans continued the tradition. They prodded their soldiers to shave to prevent their enemies from grabbing their hair during combat. Even the Bible states Job shaved his head to show his dedication to God. As the custom of shaving spread throughout the world, men from regions who did not practice the art were called "barbarians" or "the un-barbered."
Women weren't left out of this painful but fashionable practice. Centuries before the birth of Christ, Roman women tweezed their eyebrows and removed body hair by using depilatory creams of arsenic and other ingredients, or rubbing their legs with pumice stone. Greek ladies used a slightly different approach-they burned off their leg hair with lamps.
In the late 1700s, a Frenchman named Jean-Jacques Perret manufactured a device to hold a razor blade in place with a wooden guard. Not long after, the British came up with a straight steel razor that was "cutting-edge" until well into the 1800s.
U.S. Army Colonel Jacob Schick, inspired by the military's repeating rifle, invented a razor with replacement blades that could be purchased in clips and inserted into the razor's handle without touching the blade. His "Magazine Repeating Razors" were the rage in 1927, and in 1931 he followed his success with the world's first electric dry shaver with oscillating blades.
Shaving became a roadside attraction with the birth of the Burma-Shave sign in 1925. The groups of little red signs with white lettering were a company ploy to make their brushless shaving cream a household word-and it worked. At its peak, over 7,000 signs dotted the roads of the United States. But in 1963, the campaign was put to rest as a result of higher speed limits and interstate highways.
The art of shaving has evolved from its savage beginnings. So what does the 21st century hold?
Same war, better weapons.
In the last few years, companies have been outdoing each other with shaving innovations. Electric and battery-operated shavers have four way moving heads-some even sport special bikini-line trimmers or facial hair "sculptors." Gillette debuted the Mach3Turbo disposable razor, with three overlapping blades and a lubricating strip for smoother shaving. In 2003, Schick offered the Quattro, featuring four blades and two conditioning strips with aloe and Vitamin E.
You say your real problem is behind you? One inventor has that covered, too. His razor extension handle (www.razorba.com) allows back hair sufferers to shave without assistance. We've come a long way from clamshells.
