History
The inventor of the nail cutter is not exactly known, but the first United States patent for an improvement in a finger-nail trimmer (implying such a device already existed) seems to be in 1875 by Valentine Fogerty. Other patents for an improvement in finger-nail trimmers are in 1876, William C. Edge, and, in 1878, John H. Hollman. Filings for complete finger-nail trimmers (not merely improvements) include, in 1881, Eugene Heim and Celestin Matz, in 1885, George H. Coates (for a finger-nail cutter), and, in 1905, Chapel S. Carter (son of a Connecticut Baptist church deacon) patented a finger-nail trimmer with a later patent in 1922. Around 1913, Carter was secretary of the H.C. Cook Company of Ansonia, Connecticut which was incorporated in 1903 as the H. T. Cook Machine Company by Henry C. Cook, Lewis I. Cook, and Chapel S. Carter. Around 1928, Carter was president of the company when, he claimed, about 1896, the "Gem"-brand finger nail cutter made its first appearance.
Around 1906, the L.T. Snow company manufactured nail cutters. Around 1908 (or 1911), the King Klip Company of New York manufactured nail cutters.
In 1947, William E. Bassett (who started the W.E. Bassett Company in 1939) developed the "Trim"-brand nail cutter, the first made using modern (at the time) manufacturing methods using the superior jaw-style design that had been around since the 19th century, but adding two nibs near the base of the file to prevent lateral movement, replaced the pinned rivet with a notched rivet, and added a thumb-swerve in the lever. In 2001 the W.E. Bassett Company acquired the Cook Bates implement division of Pacer Technology.
Other manufacturers include Evenflo (China), Three Seven (777) (Korea), and DOVO Solingen (Germany).
Read more about this topic: Nail Clipper
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)