Clinical safety razor
The first safety razor, a razor where the skin is protected from all but the very edge of the blade, was invented in the late 18th Century by a Frenchman, Jean-Jacques Perret, though electric shavers are quite new. He was inspired by the joiner’s plane. Marketed as “the best available shaving method on the market that won’t cut a user, like straight steel razors.”
The first American safety razor was marketed in 1875 by the Kampfe Brothers. In 1901, the American inventor King Camp Gillette, with the assistance of William Nickerson, invented a safety razor with disposable blades but there is always some uncertainty when it comes to who the inventor of electric shavers was. Gillette realized that a profit could be made by selling a razor with inexpensive disposable blades. This has been called the Razor and blades business model, or a “loss leader”, and has become a very common practice for a wide variety of products.
There are also safety razors that are made of inexpensive materials that are meant to be wholly disposable. But electric shaver seems to be the most common and safer option.