Dry-Shave War

Few men have been so long or so profitably interested in shaving as Colonel Jacob Schick. It was he who first applied the principle of the repeating rifle to the design of safety razors, inventing in 1921 the Schick magazine razor with a plunger for discarding and inserting blades. Eight years later he perfected the power-driven shave. The Schick Dry Shaver, an electric gadget selling for $15 which mows down whiskers without cream or lather, has found its way into 500,000 U. S. homes. Fortnight ago Colonel Schick came unbloodied through the first round of the year's biggest razor battle when the U. S. District Court in Brooklyn held that his basic patent for the Dry Shaver had been infringed by Dictograph Products Co.

Trouble between Colonel Schick and Dictograph's Chairman Archie Moulton Andrews began in 1934 after the Chicago World's Fair. Promoter Andrews, who had had permission to sell the Dry Shaver at the Fair along with his own Lektrolite cigaret lighter, claimed Midwestern distribution rights. Colonel Schick denied the claim. Irate Promoter Andrews proceeded to work out and manufacture in Stamford, Conn., not far from the Schick plant, a rival electric razor called the Packard Lektro-Shaver. Colonel Schick sued Dictograph for infringement of patent. Mr. Andrews, who owns 20 shares of Schick stock, replied by bringing suit for mismanagement against the Colonel, who owns all the rest of Schick's 5,620 shares.

Basic patent in question concerned the shaving mechanism in the head of the razor. The Schick Dry Shaver tapers to a thin edge of metal perforated by tiny slots. Whiskers caught in these slots are cut off by a blade shuttling back and forth beneath them. The Lektro-Shaver differs by being roundheaded, with a single horizontal slot in which whiskers are sheared off by a blade in rocking motion. Dictograph held that these differences were essential and that the Schick patent had been anticipated, anyway, by an English inventor named Appleyard in 1913. The court, however, found the evidence of infringement "inescapable."

Promptly Dictograph announced that it would appeal the decision, reminded dealers that patent insurance protected them against possible loss, found cause for satisfaction in the court's finding that a second patent dealing with hair disposal mechanism had not been infringed.

At this Colonel Schick, who had been called back from golfing in Bermuda for the decision, sputtered with rage. Into the advertising columns of Manhattan newspapers last week went three-column Schick ads, quoting the decision to prove that Lektro-Shaver had been upheld only on a minor point. Best quotation in the Colonel's opinion was this: "The Schick device. . . is new, novel, and useful, and it can be well understood that in all probability this device will revolutionize the manner and method of shaving."

Now nearing 60, squarejawed, shaggy-haired Colonel Schick is convinced that both he and his razor will outlive all competitors. For himself, he has a theory of longevity which involves losing the ordinary mortal awareness of time. For the Schick razor he envisions a great world market. He incorporated his patent-holding company, Schick Industries. Ltd., in Nassau, Bahamas, where he has neither income tax nor corporation tax to pay. Recently he has won two notable patent decisions in Germany and Czechoslovakia, has built a second Schick plant in Stamford and another in Montreal.

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