History
A rudimentary form of shaving cream was documented in Sumer around 3000 BC. This substance combined wood alkali and animal fat and was applied to a beard as a shaving preparation.
Until the early 20th century, bars or sticks of hard shaving soap were used. Later, tubes containing compounds of oils and soft soap were sold. Newer creams introduced in the 1940s neither produced lather nor required brushes, often referred to as brushless creams.
Soaps are used by wetting a shaving brush, which is made out of either boar hair or badger hair, and swirling the brush on the soap, then painting the face with the brush. Brushless creams do not produce a lather, thereby removing its ability to protect the skin against cuts. Traditional soaps are still available today from such makers as The Art of Shaving, Crabtree and Evelyn, Proraso and Geo. F. Trumper.
Read more about this topic: Shaving Cream
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)