King C. Gillette

ABOUT KING C. GILLETTE

Inventor of the first safety razor who gave the world an easy way to shave.

He discovered that cheap, disposable items sold best while working as a traveling salesman, and he decided to use that process to make a thin, disposable shaving blade.

He was usually credited with inventing the concept of giving away razors to increase purchase of the blades, but that was a practice instituted by his company after his death.

He was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and grew up in Chicago.

He was a Utopian socialist, imagining a perfect metropolis on the banks of the Niagara River and recruiting - unsuccessfully - the industrialist Henry Ford to run it.