I love this stuff!
What Gillette
- Thread starter Eric62
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I love this stuff!
That makes sense, although as you say it all hinges on the provenance of the case. I think late 1908 is still a possibility for that diamond-logo case, since http://mr-razor.com/Werbung/C 1908 Gillette Blades.jpg shows a diamond logo on a blade with the date 1 Sept 1908 - and as you say it is an early example. Meanwhile Achim's 'H' serial number has a script-logo case, and I would expect an 'E' number to come before 'H'. So my own hunch is a mismatch, but there is plenty of room for different views.
It might help if we could narrow down the dates for the presidency. McKibben wrote that King Camp Gillette was company president at the beginning, from 1901 to 1903. Of course that is too early for this razor or case. He resigned, but remained a director, when Joyce declined to pay him a salary. Joyce was paying the company bills at the time, in a role much like an angel investor, so he called the shots. McKibben also writes that Joyce was responsible for the $5 price of the early sets, and that the rest of the board wanted $3 sets. Anyway, my reading is that KCG took up the VP role - with salary - late in 1904. The London sales office opened in 1905, but they would have been selling USA-made razors and blades at first. McKibben is not clear on when KCG became president again, but I found a 1907 Directory of directors in the city of Boston and vicinity that shows Joyce as president. The 1908 edition lists KCG. Given publication times, this implies that the title changed hands sometime in 1907 or early in 1908.
Yes, the blade depicted in that ad is one of the oldest uses of the diamond that I've seen. The USPTO lists the trademark as having been filed on May 27, 1908 and issued on October 13, 1908, with the "first use in commerce" listed as May 16, 1908. So it's possible they started using it in late 1908, especially with the sewn-in labels which could very easily be distributed and affixed.
I really have no idea what's going on with that "H" series British Single Ring of Achim's. I seriously doubt that there were more than 5,000,000 razors made between those two script-logo examples that he's got. Plus when you consider that it's also paired with the older cardboard "Dull/Sharp" blade boxes, the "H" series razor would have actually been earlier than the "B" series one with the metal blade cases (which have the diamond logo on them), assuming that both sets are correct and original.
That's a great find there in the Directory of Directors. I hadn't turned up those publications before. Also, you're right, I misspoke before -- I should have said, "when KCG first entered the company's payroll." I don't know if there are any products or ads from that very early period (1901-1903/04) that refer to him as the President, but I do have at least a couple of shippers from that 1904-1907/08 range that give his title as "Vice President." In any case, it sounds like his switch back to President would probably have predated the change to the diamond logo, even if only slightly.
Although it doesn't add much concrete in the way of facts to help us out here, I just love Fred Dorr's account of his designing the diamond logo that ran in the April 1918 issue of The Gillette Blade.
That is a good story. Thanks for linking it, and your reasoning about the 'H' makes sense to me. It is hard to see how the British serials would be so much higher than the contemporary USA ones, unless they started from a different base or there was something else going on.
I also went spelunking in the Blade, and came up with this from KCG:
I had assumed that a razor with a British patent number would be made in the UK, but this suggests that there were no Made in England razors before early 1909, and earlier ones were made in Boston (or perhaps Montreal, from 1906 on?) and shipped to London. Achim's early examples do not show "Made in England" anywhere that I can see. But his early USA single rings have no such marking either, so I suppose they did not start that until later on. But if the pre-1909 British sets were made in the USA, then it becomes even harder to see how a script-logo case would contain anything past an 'A' or 'B' serial number.
This also suggests that after September 1908 the case ought to read "Gillette Safety Razor, Ltd" rather than "Gillette Safety Razor Co". But I might be putting too much faith in KCG's memory or in the consistency of the factory output. After all, a page or two later we have this drawing with "Company" instead of "Ltd", right on the factory building.
Later in the Blade there is a piece by A.A. Bittues, Managing Director Gillette Safety Razor Co of Canada. He writes that he went to Paris in 1905 to establish a plant there, and to Montreal in the second half of 1906 (and http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showth...-old-type-date-question?p=4069228#post4069228 says it was in operation by August 1906).
The rest of the piece is funny too, but later in the same article he mentions a couple of interesting facts. One is that the first Montreal plant was burned out, but quickly replaced (this makes the 1912 factory the third one in Montreal). A bit later he writes that "There are shipments leaving the Montreal factory for England". That was in 1918, well after the Leicster factory was up and running. Buttes writes that Montreal's early production was good but early sales were very slow. So it would make sense to send excess razors to England, even from the beginning.
Maybe we can spin that into a theory? If some of the pre-1909 British sets were made in USA, we could expect them to have no letter, or 'A' or 'B' numbers. If after 1906 the Montreal factory was making more razors than it could sell locally, they might have begun shipping excess production to England. I think the early Paris plant only made blades, but possibly it was turning out excess razors too. We think that the Montreal plant used 'PC' and 'C' prefixes from an early date. Maybe they decided to label some razors destined for England with 'E' for England, and then got confused and used 'G' for Great Britain? And eventually they ran through 'G' and went to 'H'? That early fire in Montreal might have caused some confusion, too.
That is all highly speculative, of course. I suppose Occam's Razor would tell us that fake sets are much more likely.
I also went spelunking in the Blade, and came up with this from KCG:
I had assumed that a razor with a British patent number would be made in the UK, but this suggests that there were no Made in England razors before early 1909, and earlier ones were made in Boston (or perhaps Montreal, from 1906 on?) and shipped to London. Achim's early examples do not show "Made in England" anywhere that I can see. But his early USA single rings have no such marking either, so I suppose they did not start that until later on. But if the pre-1909 British sets were made in the USA, then it becomes even harder to see how a script-logo case would contain anything past an 'A' or 'B' serial number.
This also suggests that after September 1908 the case ought to read "Gillette Safety Razor, Ltd" rather than "Gillette Safety Razor Co". But I might be putting too much faith in KCG's memory or in the consistency of the factory output. After all, a page or two later we have this drawing with "Company" instead of "Ltd", right on the factory building.
Later in the Blade there is a piece by A.A. Bittues, Managing Director Gillette Safety Razor Co of Canada. He writes that he went to Paris in 1905 to establish a plant there, and to Montreal in the second half of 1906 (and http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showth...-old-type-date-question?p=4069228#post4069228 says it was in operation by August 1906).
The rest of the piece is funny too, but later in the same article he mentions a couple of interesting facts. One is that the first Montreal plant was burned out, but quickly replaced (this makes the 1912 factory the third one in Montreal). A bit later he writes that "There are shipments leaving the Montreal factory for England". That was in 1918, well after the Leicster factory was up and running. Buttes writes that Montreal's early production was good but early sales were very slow. So it would make sense to send excess razors to England, even from the beginning.
Maybe we can spin that into a theory? If some of the pre-1909 British sets were made in USA, we could expect them to have no letter, or 'A' or 'B' numbers. If after 1906 the Montreal factory was making more razors than it could sell locally, they might have begun shipping excess production to England. I think the early Paris plant only made blades, but possibly it was turning out excess razors too. We think that the Montreal plant used 'PC' and 'C' prefixes from an early date. Maybe they decided to label some razors destined for England with 'E' for England, and then got confused and used 'G' for Great Britain? And eventually they ran through 'G' and went to 'H'? That early fire in Montreal might have caused some confusion, too.
That is all highly speculative, of course. I suppose Occam's Razor would tell us that fake sets are much more likely.
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I totally want to continue this conversation, but we've probably crossed the line into threadjacking here at this point. I'm going to start a separate "Gillette Company History Geek Out" thread so we can continue things there.
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FYI, a Big Fellow won't fit in a Richwood case.
Oh my... old thread alert! Well anyway. Kind of sad those two sets got mixed up and separated.
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