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Gillette Company History Geek Out

alex2363

alex2363

mblakele said:
Is "Attra" a typo or a historical artifact? Nowadays the spelling is "Atra".

This is a confusing story: apparently Gillette used the name "Atra" as an internal code name for the Trac II, the first generation of twin-blade cartridge. Then a few years later they used Atra again, as the public name for the modern pivoting Atra / Contour product.

McKibben starts his version of the story in 1964: http://books.google.com/books?id=YCldvmXq25EC&pg=PA67. I think McKibben himself got confused about the details, sometimes distinguishing the Rex from the Atra and sometimes conflating them. But it looks like the original Atra (developed 1964-71) was basically a code name for the Trac II, which launched in October 1971 according to McKibben. The modern pivot-head Atra / Contour was the next generation and came out ca. 1976.
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This was a typo, im meant to put Atra. The source may not be too reliable, i got it from Russel Adams book. I remember that it may contain few errors, one such error is on same subject matter on the Atra page 267 bottom page: he spells misspells Australian test razor- Autralian Test Razor.

$as.jpg$aa.jpg
 
alex2363

alex2363

mblakele said:
Is "Attra" a typo or a historical artifact? Nowadays the spelling is "Atra".

This is a confusing story: apparently Gillette used the name "Atra" as an internal code name for the Trac II, the first generation of twin-blade cartridge. Then a few years later they used Atra again, as the public name for the modern pivoting Atra / Contour product.

McKibben starts his version of the story in 1964: http://books.google.com/books?id=YCldvmXq25EC&pg=PA67. I think McKibben himself got confused about the details, sometimes distinguishing the Rex from the Atra and sometimes conflating them. But it looks like the original Atra (developed 1964-71) was basically a code name for the Trac II, which launched in October 1971 according to McKibben. The modern pivot-head Atra / Contour was the next generation and came out ca. 1976.
Click to expand...

I read both books and each one book had the same conflicting details of the development. The UK Reading and Boston research teams came up idea that a 2 blade cart was the way to go after they were prepared to go all out on the Sure Touch which went into test market in 1971.

This is what led to 2 projects -project 1, model with narrow blades faced each other like cutting edges of potato peeler, idea for users to do a scrubbing motion to cut of whiskers on both up and down pass. Project 2 was the two cart razor. This was called the Emperor project which was later named the Rex project after the 2 were merged as one. The Rex project posed few problems, one was the clogging of the twin blades. The other project had less issues so in 1967 Gillette went to Australia to test market under the name CONTRA which was changed to ATRA a acronym for Australian Test Razor.
 
alex2363

alex2363

mblakele said:
This item is a little later than most of the material in this thread, but I hope not too far off-topic. Google books has a copy of Industrial research laboratories of the United States, National Research Council 1940. On p122 this description appeared (emphasis mine, as are any errors):



Interesting that there was no official research department until 1910. Of course Nickerson and his staff did quite a bit of R&D before then.
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You figure after 7 years of success they could afford to hire design and research help to alleviate the load on Nickerson and his helpers.

mblakele said:
But I wonder how the development of the New Improved worked out between this department and the rest of the company?

At a rough guess a research department of this size would have a total budget of around $10M in 2014 dollars. Of course it was probably smaller in 1910, and grew up with the company. Nowadays the Gillette division of P&G has two labs: one in Boston USA and the other in Reading UK.

As far as I could tell no other USA safety razor company reported having an R&D lab at all.
Click to expand...

Gillette had plans for the New improved in 1916, in 1918 Frank Fahey called his Corp lieutenants to discuss the expiring patent. They had 3 options:
1-improve design
2-reduce manufacture costs and sell the razor cheaper
3-make new cheap razor to compete with other cheap ones..


They chose option one, improve on the design, and called new razor the Model B . The committee met secretly 74 times and decided on the design in Jan 13 1920. So you figure that not many Gillette personnel knew much about anything on the development. The only ones that knew were the chosen committee that kept it a secret.
 
Domminigan

Domminigan

I will edit this later, but I just retread the Krumholz book a couple nights ago, and I thought I remembered the mention that the Australian Test Razor ATRA was having issues with clogging, one of the Employees Frank Dorian thought about it a bit and figured out they needed to modify and keep the blades aligned. They produced this model as the new Trac-II and started production. They kept going with the the project, kept it called ATRA for a later model which they were able to fit to a different acronym... Automatic Tracking Razor Action

edited to change engineers to employees, add Frank Dorian's forgotten name, correct a couple of miss worded phrases and add in the new acronym for the ATRA.
 
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Domminigan

Domminigan

alex2363 said:
I read both books and each one book had the same conflicting details of the development. The UK Reading and Boston research teams came up idea that a 2 blade cart was the way to go after they were prepared to go all out on the Sure Touch which went into test market in 1971.

This is what led to 2 projects -project 1, model with narrow blades faced each other like cutting edges of potato peeler, idea for users to do a scrubbing motion to cut of whiskers on both up and down pass. Project 2 was the two cart razor. This was called the Emperor project which was later named the Rex project after the 2 were merged as one. The Rex project posed few problems, one was the clogging of the twin blades. The other project had less issues so in 1967 Gillette went to Australia to test market under the name CONTRA which was changed to ATRA a acronym for Australian Test Razor.
Click to expand...
The rough idea from the Krumholz book is that "Frank Dorian came up with the idea of perforating the blades to allow flow through of lather and stubble and to use a comb like spacer to keep the blades aligned. His idea worked so well that they shelved the ATRA project for the time being and rushed the trac II into production for the 1971 World Series debut." <= the previous was not a direct quote, but close enough to attribute to Mr. K.
The ATRA project either morphed or was restarted, K book just says after a gap explaining about the Trac II that "Gillette continued working on a new razor with an old name, the ATRA." ... "the new cartridge razor launched in July of 1977 was named the ATRA, which coincidentally was also an acronym for "Automatic Tracking Razor Action""
 
rxonmymind

rxonmymind

A small contribution that I'm sure has already been posted. I was at an antique store today and found instructions for a Gillette New.
 

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mffjm95

mffjm95

Mac Daddy,

Thanks for the thread I learned a lot from reading it. As a "wet behind the ears" newbie, a little history is always great.

Jim
 
alex2363

alex2363

Domminigan said:
The rough idea from the Krumholz book is that "Frank Dorian came up with the idea of perforating the blades to allow flow through of lather and stubble and to use a comb like spacer to keep the blades aligned. His idea worked so well that they shelved the ATRA project for the time being and rushed the trac II into production for the 1971 World Series debut." <= the previous was not a direct quote, but close enough to attribute to Mr. K.
The ATRA project either morphed or was restarted, K book just says after a gap explaining about the Trac II that "Gillette continued working on a new razor with an old name, the ATRA." ... "the new cartridge razor launched in July of 1977 was named the ATRA, which coincidentally was also an acronym for "Automatic Tracking Razor Action""
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Very good insight. The book does not seem to have a proper structure in terms of writing or data. It goes from one subject and then back tracks to another and so forth. Many members noticed a few errors such as the Atra project which he flip flop the names. The book does have great data but it may be improper or outdated in some areas. I still refer to it along with the Cutting Edge by Gordon Mckibben. http://books.google.com/books?id=YC...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
 
mblakele

mblakele

Over at http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/396922-Gillette-Single-Rings-with-British-Patent-Numbers we got off track and started to discuss the Gillette Securities Company, a vehicle used by King Camp and Holloway to take over the company ca. 1906.

Here is the post that started us off: I will add some new information in a moment.

alex2363 said:
In retrospect it is more complex than that. Gillette did have the upper hand in the end over Joyce.
The Joyce-Gillette feud started when Gillette blocked Joyce's pet proposition to sell over seas right to the razor. The Gillette decision turned out to be the right one and it kept the company from going bankrupt. Joyce's point of view was that the company was doing bad and the sell of the rights would have been the way to go. Joyce saw KG as overbearing and wrongheaded as Gillette pushed his views to the other directors. Joyce also disagreed on KG intent on making products in Newark NJ, and eventually making it the headquarters there too. The Newark move was now set in motion.

Gillette now had his brother Mott King involved in the Newark venture. Mott and a mechanical engineer/Leach King were working on a Bottle Capping machine patented by Gillette, but soon KG had them both working on Newark project. Mott was in charge of razor boxes/cases and Leach was in charge of designing and building machinery for the Boston, French, Canadian, and German branches. Gillette had plans to move the whole company there as of 1905.

Joyce balked at Gillette's plans to move, and as majority share holder he had some power prevent any moves by Gillette. Joyce's lawyers described Gillette intentions as " fraudulent purpose to devise a scheme and create an instrumentality by which he, while a minority stock holder could permantely control the management of the company."

Gillette would counter that he had the good intentions to protect the interests of his family and friends. But Gillette did have power lawyers, and so the Inventions Securities Company was organized in fall 1906, the architect was Boston prominent corporate lawyer Luis Brandeis who had been involved with Gillette legal affairs almost since the beginning. The purpose of the company was to hold stock in the razor company. Gillette soon was able to gather enough shares including his family and own to get 32,668 shares of Gillette stock or more than half of the 65,000 outstanding shares and more than 24117 that Joyce had. For Gillette it was a expensive venture, he borrowed $62,000 from First National bank/Boston.

As president of the Inventions Securities Gillette [ later changed to Gillette Securities Company] he had more power than minority stock holdr. In 1907 KG flexed his muscle by electing himself Vice president and changed the few company policies to expand the directors from 5 to 7 so he can hand pick a few of his own so he can plan for a total takeover.

In the meantime a few events were occurring which effected Gillette sales, such as blade output. The 80,000 packages in Aug 1907 plunged to half that by the Sept 1907. Many dealers wanted a bigger output but Gillette did not produce which increased the tensions between Joyce and KG.

In October Gillette made a strategic move to resign, which caused the directors to act quickly. They called on/voted for Joyce to persuade Gillette to stay and retract his resignation. Having no other choice than to persuade KG to stay, by mid January Gillette was made President, a post he would hold til his death. Joyce was now Vice President. Gillette won the courtroom battle at the end it seems. Gillette started taking hands on llong range and day to day operations of the company. By 1908 He appointed Leach in rented factory space in Newark to improve a more compact Pocket Edition razor. Gillette sent Leach sketches of Italian inspired bracelet so Leach could copy it onto the handles.

Ward Holloway departed soon afterwords 1908, he also was at odds with Gillette. Ward sold his stocks to Joyce. Joyce would always claim that Gillette was depriving him of a rightful share piece of the pie, and Gillette contends that Joyce was never appreciative of the fact that he let him in on the razor profit bonanza.

[ Sources Russell B Adams book]
Click to expand...
 
mblakele

mblakele

Reading about this GSC business, I noticed that Adams and McKibben seem to disagree about a few details. Neither seem to want to talk about it much, and I can understand that. Between the infighting and the shareholder lawsuits it was probably the worst scandal in Gillette history up until the 1929-30 patent fight. So here I am, a scandal-monger.

When histories are silent or conflicting, I like to go to contemporary sources. One good one seems to be this in 1916 testimony before Congress. This was part of the Brandeis confirmation hearings.



This seems to explain the shift in alliances: originally it was Holloway and Gillette vs. Joyce and Curran. This surprised me because Holloway was originally brought in by Joyce. But now it appears that he switched sides again in 1908, and then the tide turned against King Camp. It appears he was more or less forced to sell his interest in the GSC to Joyce, and with it control of the Gillette company. This makes more sense to me than the McKibben story, which had Joyce simply buying out King Camp when the GSC story suggested that King Camp was in control.

Another surprise is that this apparently happened in late 1911 rather than in 1910 as McKibben wrote. It would be nice to corroborate that with other sources.

However I am left with this impression of events:

  • 1902: Joyce invests $60,000 and takes de facto control of the company.
  • 1904: King Camp leaves the USA and resigns as president, leaving Holloway in charge. He later returns and takes a salary as a director only.
  • 1906: Joyce is president and King Camp is vice president. King Camp and Holloway and begins to acquire stock under the mantle of the Gillette Securities Corporation.
  • 1907: GSC takes control. In the following year, 1908 directories will list him as president and Joyce as vice president.
  • 1908: Joyce buys interest in GSC from Holloway. In theory Joyce controls the company again, but not de facto because King Camp still has a voice in GSC.
  • 1911 (late): Joyce exercises a clause in the GSC bylaws and buys out King Camp, with or without his consent.

It would be very interesting to know more about how that final buyout was arranged. Could King Camp have done the same to Joyce, if he had thought of it first and had been able to raise enough money?

Naturally the various article in the Blade avoid these events: too sordid. And McKibben puts the Joyce buyout in 1910 rather than 1911. There may be a story behind that, and it may relate to this quote from the same 1916 hearings:



I am not quite sure what this means: does it refer to Joyce buying an interest in GSC from Holloway, or buying out King Camp?
 
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MacDaddy

MacDaddy

mblakele said:
This seems to explain the shift in alliances: originally it was Holloway and Gillette vs. Joyce and Curran. This surprised me because Holloway was originally brought in by Joyce.
Click to expand...

I'm still chewing through a lot of this good stuff, but this point above tickled something in the back of my head. I hadn't given much thought to Holloway before, but as I was reading your post here it clicked where I'd remembered seeing the name before. Check out the copyright statement on KCG's book from 1894, The Human Drift:



I haven't been able to confirm, yet, that that "Holloway" is Ward Holloway, but in looking for other links between these two I turned up this Find a Grave record for Holloway's burial plot. The second photo (below) there caught my eye -- the marker has a masonic symbol, the double-headed eagle with a "32" inside a triangle, that we've actually discussed here previously (a badge with the emblem was found attached to a Combination Set).

$103902263_136235986971.jpg

That lead me to this Masons membership card for Holloway:

$41264_B132571-00724.jpg

I thought I had remembered KCG having been a Mason, too, so I went looking to see what I could find there. Lo and behold:

$41264_B132567-05155.jpg

They appear to have been admitted into the same lodge, Adelphi, in South Boston on the same day: June 18, 1901. One interesting point there is that, as I understand it, the "Dim." date on the card represents the date that KCG withdrew himself ("dimitted") from the organization, though it seems he later joined the Columbian Lodge in Boston.
 
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mblakele

mblakele

Good stuff, Porter.

That "Dim." date 1904-01-19 matches up with when King Camp went back to work for Crown Cork in the UK and Holloway became company president. Possibly King Camp kept up a UK affiliation during that time?

All this suggests that the relationships between King Camp, Holloway, and Joyce were a little more fluid than I thought. That makes sense: in the 1918 Blade King Camp relates that he had done business with Joyce before 1902. Probably they had a number of mutual business or personal relationships, Holloway among them.
 
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mblakele

mblakele

Here is another possible approach to learning more about the early operation in Germany.





This article in a 1913 volume of Bulletin of the United States Trade-Mark Association was apparently translated from an article in the German-language Markenschutz und Wettbewerb for 1912. That original source is available at http://books.google.com/books?id=TmEvAQAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=gillette but only in snippet view and I cannot puzzle out the old-style font. So for now I will rely on the translation.

This seems to confirm much of what we got from Marshall in the 1919 issue of the Gillette Blade: manufacturing in Germany probably started in 1908 and ceased in 1909. Despite the mention of "safety razors and similar goods" I still have no opinion on whether they made razor sets, blades, or both. That phrase is a translation and anyway reflects intent rather than action.

This source also seems to confirm that the German operation was managed as a branch of the UK rather than USA organization. Marshall hinted at that, but was not explicit. That helps explain why there is so little information about the German operation: it would not have been a Maine corporation, etc. Finally we learn that the German branch continued sales-only operations until early 1910, and that the prior relationship with Grell in Hamburg continued after that.
 
rxonmymind

rxonmymind

Just to give an idea of what has to happen when coming up with a "NEW" idea. The invention of the Gillette NEW.


A group of technical experts then started out to perfect the Gillette mechanically, to make it more accurate as an instrument of precision. Thousands of measurements and
[graphic]
calculations had been worked out, when three remarkable discoveries were made. These were the Gillette Fulcrum Shoulder, Overhanging Cap and Channeled Guard. These discoveries proved to be the crux of the problem. For the first time in any razor there is micrometric control of blade position. A shaving edge rigid and straight—in perfect contact with the cap through its whole length! Here is that thing long sought—a shaving edge guarded from the face but free to the beard. It took some 45,000 calculations, proved out by more than 19,000 shaving tests, to make the New Gillette an accomplished fact. It is now ready—the New Improved Gillette Safety Razor.
 
mblakele

mblakele

rxonmymind said:
Just to give an idea of what has to happen when coming up with a "NEW" idea. The invention of the Gillette NEW New Improved.

A group of technical experts then started out to perfect the Gillette mechanically, to make it more accurate as an instrument of precision. Thousands of measurements and
[graphic]
calculations had been worked out, when three remarkable discoveries were made. These were the Gillette Fulcrum Shoulder, Overhanging Cap and Channeled Guard. These discoveries proved to be the crux of the problem. For the first time in any razor there is micrometric control of blade position. A shaving edge rigid and straight—in perfect contact with the cap through its whole length! Here is that thing long sought—a shaving edge guarded from the face but free to the beard. It took some 45,000 calculations, proved out by more than 19,000 shaving tests, to make the New Gillette an accomplished fact. It is now ready—the New Improved Gillette Safety Razor.
Click to expand...

That sounds like the 1921 introductory spiel for the New Improved. No doubt you knew that, but I thought I would mention it to help anyone confused about the 1920s New Improved vs the 1930s NEW.

Here is an example from the original New Improved print campaign:



Then in 1930 there was a "Six Vital Improvements" print campaign for the NEW: http://books.google.com/books?id=nuMDAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA164. There was no mention of how many calculations this took - not even in the German-language version.

 
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