Word: beards
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Wouldn't it be nice if there really were a fat guy with a white Lou Albano beard and a red suit who would see to the fact that you got the exact records you wanted for Christmas? Instead, we have a bunch of well-intentioned parents, siblings and spouses (present or future) who are responsible for the six copies of Styx's live album that are festering on the bottom of your album collection...
...part of South Boston something very strange is happening. Every day, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., a steady stream of men can be seen entering and leaving this room. When they go in, the men have a vaguely scruffy look and finger a thick stubble of half-grown beard. When they go out, however, they are smooth and trim, clean-shaven, and smelling faintly of lotions and creams. This is the Shaving Research Room, the living heart of the world's largest razor blade factory: Gillette Corp.'s World Shaving Headquarters in South Boston...
...really catch on until 356 B.C. when bronze razors were available, according to the text. In that year, Roman hero Scipio Africanus celebrated his victory over arch-rival Hannibal with a clean shave and from there on, progress has been steady in helping man's continuing battle against the beard: in the mid-1100s Arab engineers introduced the steel razor, the 17th-century European Reformation brought "a clean-shaven look" along with a new approach to eternal salvation, and in 1903 the first Gillette safety razor was introduced...
...distinction begs a final question. The most extensive shave ever attempted in the research room came in 1975 when, according to 43-year Gillette employee Mary Nagle, an employee came in with "a big grey beard, which had black in it." Apparently driven beyond endurance by the paradox of spending his days making razors while sporting a beard of at least 12 inches (descriptions vary), this man had attempted to end the beard at home, with a TRAC II, but was foiled by the slim extension of the blades. In desperation, Nagle says, he came to the Research Room. Again...
Then came 1971, and the moment that changed the way the world shaves forever. Working in conditions of absolute secrecy, Gillette scientists perfected a shaving technique known as "hystersis"--a two-blade system in which the first razor gave the beard a rough cut and then cunningly pulled it away from the face. . . where a second blade (placed exactly 60 one-thousandths of an inch behind the first) could snip it close to the skin before it had a chance to fall back in place. The result: the world's closest shave. They called the razor TRAC...