Achieve 2x shaving razor efficiency! Warning: do not use unless your face is EXACTLY symmetrical.

Background:

In the early 1800s, somewhat before the invention of the Xerox machine and the iPhone camera, the only way to copy a document was to actually write it twice.

That is, UNLESS you owned a newfangled “polygraph”  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph_(duplicating_device) ), which enabled writing with two mechanically linked pens simultaneously (Figure 1).

Fig. 1: This so-called “polygraph” was invented in the early 1800s and was apparently a favorite technological gizmo of U.S. president Thomas Jefferson. According to Wikipedia, this engraving is from “Rees’s Cyclopaedia,” (approx. 1820).

Proposal:

This same technology could be adapted to allow a person to operate two shaving razors simultaneously, thus cutting (ha ha) the shaving time in half (Figure 2).

Fig. 2: The user simply wears this contraption like a hat (note the headband). When the user moves the primary (blue) razor (A), the levers and pulleys (B) transmit a mirrored movement to the secondary (green) razor (C).

Some additional mechanical complexity might be required in order to perfectly mirror the motions of the razor.

Conclusion:

Razors somehow managed to increase from two blades to three (in 1998), four (in 2003), five (in 2006), six (in 2009), and seven (in 2015). But somehow the idea of duplicating the razors themselves never occurred to the world’s leading razorologists! The best ideas are often so obvious in retrospect.

PROS: Should greatly increase shaving efficiency.

CONS: Potentially unsafe for non-mathematically-symmetrical faces, which would disqualify at least 99% of the population.

Originally published 2026-04-27.