Skip to main content

The Human Drift

By



It's amazing how some things withstand the test of time like the safety razor.  Despite all the great technological improvement, many of which King Camp Gillette imagined himself in The Human Drift, the safety razor is as valued today as it was when Gillette patented it in 1880.

I came across a little biography of Gillette some years back and was amazed to learn of the man behind the razor, whose brand name still exists on safety blades today.  He had imagined a utopia, which he called Metropolis on the site of Niagara Falls designed to house millions and using the hydro-power to generate electricity.  It is very classical in inspiration, no doubt taken from the ideas of Etienne-Louis Boullee, who had imagined a similar structure a hundred years before in his Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton.

However, other instruments haven't fared so well, like the slide rule, which Newton would have used himself over 300 years ago.  It's an amazing device, which NPR pays homage to in this new series.  It remained in use into the early 70s before the calculator replaced it.

I remember having to learn how to use one for math class.  I still have my Dad's old slide rule, along with his Brunton compass, which is still made today, and a little mini sextant he used for survey maps of geological veins in Africa.  He would tell me stories as he taught me how to use his slide rule.  I still have all those instruments in their respective leather cases.

I still have my grandfather's silver-plated safety razor as well,  which I continue to use today.  My son was wanting a safety razor of his own, so I bought him a nice butterfly razor, which he is very happy with.  While technological breakthroughs have made slide rules, Brunton compasses and sextants obsolete (barring a zombie apocalypse), you still can't  beat the close shave of a safety razor.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

By
It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi
12 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Colonel

By
Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!
240 comments
Read more