I used my dad's early 70's Norelco VIP triple header until it died in 2010. That thing was built like a tank. The ni-cads leaked on the circuit board that they were attached to. I should have replaced them sooner like dad always did when he took it in for service every other year.They've had rechargeable shavers since the 60's, at least. Early ones used nickle-cadmium batteries.
The 1960's Norelco rechargables were bigger and heavy, lots of metal inside them to serve as scaffolding for the batteries. The motor was also a completely different type.
Clayton
Sent from my SM-A705U using Tapatalk