razor, keen-edged cutting implement for shaving or cutting hair. Prehistoric cave drawings show that clam shells, shark’s teeth, and sharpened flints were used as shaving implements. Solid gold and copper razors have been found in Egyptian tombs of the 4th millennium bce. According to the Roman historian Livy, the razor was introduced in Rome in the 6th century bce by Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, legendary king of Rome; but shaving did not become customary until the 5th century bce.
Steel razors with ornamented handles and individually hollow-ground blades were crafted in Sheffield, England, the centre of the cutlery industry, in the 18th and 19th centuries. The hard crucible steel produced there by Benjamin Huntsman in 1740 was first rejected and then, later, after its adoption in France, deemed superior by the local manufacturers.
In the United States a hoe-shaped safety razor, a steel blade with a guard along one edge, was produced in 1880, and, at the beginning of the 20th century, King Camp Gillette combined the hoe shape with the double-edged replaceable blade. In the early 1960s several countries began to manufacture stainless steel blades for safety razors, with the advantage of longer use.
The popularity of the long-wearing double-edged blade was greatly eclipsed by the development of inexpensive cartridge-style injector blades, designed to fit into disposable plastic handles. The cartridge had only one cutting edge, but many manufacturers produced a “double-edged” instrument by placing two blades on one side. By the early 21st century, safety razors with up to five blades were also common.
Electric razors were patented as early as 1900 in the United States, but the first to be successfully manufactured was that on which Jacob Schick, a retired U.S. Army colonel, applied for a patent in 1928 and that he placed on the market in 1931. Competitive models soon appeared. In the electric razor a shearing head, driven by a small motor, is divided into two sections: the outer consists of a series of slots to grip the hairs and the inner of a series of saw blades. Models vary in the number and design of the blades, in the shape of the shearing head (round or flat), and in auxiliary devices such as clippers for sideburns.