Nail Clipper - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• A nail trimmer is concealed in a Bible by inmate Frank Morris in the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz.

• Julio Cortázar provides a (presumably false) history of nail cutters in his novel Hopscotch:

"Think of a repertory of insignificant things, the enormous work which goes into studying them and gaining a basic knowledge of them. A history of nail cutters, two thousand volumes to acquire the certain knowledge that until 1675 these small things had never received any mention. Suddenly in Mainz someone does a picture of a woman cutting a nail. It is not exactly a pair of nail cutters, but it looks like it. In the eighteenth century a certain Philip McKinney of Baltimore patents the first nailcutters with a spring attached: the problem is solved, the fingers can squeeze with all their strength to cut toenails, incredibly tough, and the cutters will snap back automatically. Five hundred notes, a year of work."