A soldier’s close shave
QUESTION When was the first electric shaver invented?
Colonel Jacob Schick was an American entrepreneur who invented the first dry electric razor and started the Schick Dry Shaver, Inc. razor company. He obtained patent no. 1,757,978 for his dry electric shaver on May 13, 1930.
A U.S. Army veteran, he served in the Philippines from 1903 to 1905 as a 2nd lieutenant with the 8th Infantry Regiment. He returned to the U.S. suffering from dysentery and was transferred to Alaska for health reasons. There he helped string thousands of miles of military telegraph wires across the state.
After retiring from the Army in 1910, Schick prospected for gold in Alaska and British Columbia, which was when he developed a hatred of shaving in the freezing cold.
Recuperating from a broken ankle, he conceived the idea for an electric razor. His original plan was for a shaver powered by an external motor, but this proved tricky to make.
Schick returned to duty when the U.S. entered World War I and headed the Army’s intelligence and criminal investigation unit in Britain.
Inspired by war weaponry, he developed the magazine repeating razor, establishing a company of that name in 1925.
The razor utilised the principles of repeating firearms, with blades sold in clips to be loaded into the razor. Schick sold the assets of his company in 1928 in order to work on his electric razor.
In 1930, his dream was realised. He produced a razor with a small electric motor encased in a black Bakelite shell that fitted in the palm of the hand.
The new model went on sale in new York on March 18, 1931, selling for $25 ($360 in today’s money). About 3,000 were sold in the first year with more than 500,000 by 1937, the year Schick died, aged 59.
Neil Dobbs, Chesterfield, Derbys.
QUESTION What is the origin of the footballing term ‘nutmeg’?
KICKInG the ball between an opponent’s legs is called a nutmeg, but no one knows why. Jimmy Hill is on record as saying: ‘When I was playing for Brentford in the Forties, I well remember nutmeg coming into vogue. nutmegs was simply rhyming slang for legs.’
There is another, more vulgar, theory, but a more erudite explanation is that it came from the slang term ‘nutmegged’, dating from the spice trade.
The idea is that nutmegs were such a valuable commodity that unscrupulous traders would mix in wooden replicas with their shipments. Thus, to be nutmegged, was to be made to look foolish.
evidence for this idea seems to come from the U.S., where nutmeg State is an unofficial yet popular nickname for Connecticut. This appears to be derived from the stories of Sam Slick of Slicksville, a fictional character created in 1835 by author Thomas Halliburton, claiming that Connecticuters were so shrewd they were able to make and sell wooden nutmegs to unsuspecting buyers.
Gillian Heath, Stone, Staffs.
QUESTION What is the origin of the term ‘the thin blue line’?
THIS is a variation on a pre- existing term, The Thin Red line, which originated at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War.
on october 25, 1854, a column of 2,500 Russian cavalry advanced on the port of Balaclava, which was the British supply base. The only force available to stop them were 200 soldiers of the 93rd Regiment of Foot (Sutherland Highlanders) and 350 Turkish infantry. A unit of 400 Russian cavalry broke off from the main force to attack the Highlanders.
As the Russians advanced, the 93rd’s commanding officer, Sir Colin Campbell (3rd Baron Clyde), told his men there could be no retreat and they must stand where they were. He formed his men into two ranks, The Thin Red line as it came to be called, to face the cavalry charge.
The Turks on the flanks broke and fled, but the Highlanders fired three volleys from their rifles, at 600, 300 and 150 yards, causing the Russians to break off their attack just before the Highlanders could fire again at point blank range.
The Times correspondent William H. Russell, who witnessed the attack, said he could see nothing to stop the enemy except for a ‘thin red streak topped with a line of steel’. This phrase was soon condensed by the public as The Thin Red line. It became a symbol of the ability of the British Army to stand and face an attack against seemingly insurmountable odds.
The phrase ‘the thin blue line’ first appeared in print in 1911 in a poem of that title by nels Dickman Anderson, where it alludes to the U.S. Army, who wore blue uniforms until the end of the 19th century. It concludes: The thin, blue line that falters not, Though wavering like the windtossed cloud, Beneath the death-cold sun forgot, Cries forth its battle-slogan proud, Nor shivers fearful of its lot.
Its use to describe the police appears much later, in the Fifties, when there was a TV show produced by the los Angeles Police Department in which its commander, Bill Parker, used the phrase.
Its first use to describe the British police seems to be in The Sunday Times in 1962, reporting on the policing of an anti-nuclear demonstration. It appears again in 1965 to describe the Massachusetts police force.
In 1995, there was a BBC TV series called The Thin Blue line, written by Ben elton and starring Rowan Atkinson, which featured the police of Gasforth Police Station. It originated from a sketch on not The nine o’Clock news, in which Atkinson played a senior officer remonstrating with a racist constable, played by Griff Rhys Jones.
Bob Dillon, Edinburgh.
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