The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1904-10-30

watch spring to an edge. It wor i.'s. VI" Nc |
enough to encourage him TO coii. IiSoa IN
experiments. and later he soeeee ,t',e,,av |
producing blades which WINE NJ than |
than piece of paper ana no iai - com |
one of the hostage stamps STRUCK - .'aa
memorate a worlds fair eouiu -, ros-
not once but many times. 1hu9 tond1a
SCISSOR Of a bunch of blades anu ma ha,,e
with which to hold them, Wouiu 10
potential sbaves of A number sufficient 10
keep his chin and cheeks smooth lor
months, and when all the places "ele
dulled they could be exchanged Aol
! others.
New Machines Needed.
The making of such razor blades caiieo
for new machines and processes. From
the ages of stone and brass down to the
present the razor maker has held the
flint, obsidian or steel in his own fingers
as he shaped and ground II, and razors
have been stropped by hand under the
shadows of the pyramids and IN the par
Der shops of Imperial Rome, Dut today
fingers of steel are taking the place OF
human hands One device cuts the piaoes
from a long strip of the metal; another
cuts holes in them; still another smooths
away rough edges. A young woman
tending three small machines Will grind
800 razor blades in day, or IL would De
better to put 1t that the machines do the
work, for the young woman's part con-
sists merely in supplying the material and
| taking away the finished product. The
man who has patiently or impatiently
stropped his own razor finds much Tor ad-
miration in the machines which hone and
strop 144 razors at a time.
These devices, which grind, hone and
strop razor blades by the hundred were
invented by Mr.. Nickerson, graduate
of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech
nology, and are only an example of the
several appliances whose invention had to
precede the entrance Of the razor into the
field of machine made products. New pro-
cesses We're necessary, for example, to
make piece of steel Of the thickness of a
sheet of paper that would nevertheless do
the work of shaving Steel Of that thick
ness tempered in the ordinary way would
curl up at the edges exactly like so much
paper, and a new method of temperiDg
/ had to be worked out to make easier tho
early morning task Of the man who
! shaves himself.
concave In Shape.
The ordinary razor blade Is concave In
shape. These paper blades-they might not
appropriately be called such-are made
concave when In use because they are
held IN curved pieces OF brass, turned
with a mathematical exactness so great
that the variation of a thousandth part ef
! an inch is taken into consideration. This
work is done by a continuance hardly
larger than an old fashioned letter press,
yet 1t exerts upon the brass a pressure Of
thirteen tons, picking up the pieces Civ
| Ing them the proper shape and throwing
them aside when finished
How rapidly razors may be made by
machinery Is euriously shown by the
capacity Of the machine which IS used in
cleaning and securing them. 1t looks like
collection of ten gallon gasolene tanks
swaying and bobbing about by machin-
cry. Securely bottled up inside are the
razor blades as yet unsharpened, mixed
in with the various substances used for
renovating them, each tank containing
about $4,000 little razor blades.
Before these razor blades go to the
people whose boards they will remove
they must all be finally tested. The man
who plucks a hair from his head In order
to use it in testing the blade of his razor
is following a time-honored practice and