Razors and Computer Chips

[yesthattom]

I don't think I'm obsessed with shaving. I mean, it's not like I've ever visited a web site dedicated to the history of Schick razors but I have noticed that the number of blades on a safety-razor cartridge is increasing at an amazing rate.

When I was young I remember seeing adverts trying to convince people that two blades were better than one. The commericials had animations, smiling people, and near-nudity... all on prime time TV. Very exciting.

The late 90's were an exciting time. The "dot com" boom was starting, the economy was going great, it was an exciting time. Part of this excitement was, of course, the introduction of the Mach 3 and later the Mach 3 Turbo. Life was good.

When the Mach 3 came out, I thought, "Gosh, it took 57 years to go from 1 blade to 2, but only 28 years to go from 2 blades to 3. That's an amazing accelleration of growth! I wondered how long before we'd be graced with the 4-blade razor. Following the current trend, it shouldn't be introduced until at least 2011.

The accellerated power increases in silicon chip technology is called "Moore's Law": The observation, made in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, that computer memory chips had doubled in capacity every 18-24 months; this trend has continued ever since the observation. He reasoned computing power would rise exponentially with time.

Now if shaving technology was to also observe Moore's law, there were amazing social and political ramifications. For example, would computer users be more cleanly shaved than non-computer users? The mind boggles.

People's boggled minds were interrupted in 2003 when Wilkinson stunned the world and released the Quattro which has 4 blades, beating Moorse's Law by almost a decade. Bite that, Gordon!

Amazingly, the world has not caught on. However, the www.wilkinson-quattro.com" web site should go a long way to fix that. It is so impressive, you'd think they're annoucing a cure for world hunger, cancer, and AIDS, all in one pill.

Here's a chart of the shaving progress:

Year	# of Blades
1915	1
1971	2
1998	3
2003	4

And a graph:

I'm wondering if my mathematically accellerated friends could help me produce a trend prediction of what year we could expect 100 blades. I think that would be the coolest thing ever.

Comments

[origamislayer.livejournal.com]

'Of course it will not end there. I bet an urgent memo has already gone out in Gillette's marketing department. "Hold some focus groups immediately!" it says. "Find out what number comes after four!"'
-- Dave Barry

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61952-2003Jul15?language=printer

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'll add that link to my website's version of this doc.