The Beginnings of Inspiration
King Gillette’s safety razor with a replaceable blade, 1905. King Camp Gillette developed the disposable blade safety razor during the 1890s with engineer William Emery Nickerson. Gillette produced the first safety razors and disposable blades in 1903 and, by the end of 1904, had produced 40,000 razors and over 12 million blades. In 1999, Gillette made nearly $10 billion in sales in over 200 countries. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)
The Gillette family had moved to New York City after the Great Chicago Fire, and Gillette’s father worked as a patent agent, so King was exposed to the idea of inventions from an early age. The idea of inventing something was always on his mind, but in the meantime, he needed to help his family and make a living, so he began to work as a salesman. In his free time, he played around with different ideas for inventions and filed a few patents by the time he reached his mid-30s. Unfortunately, none of his ideas managed to stick.