King Camp Gillette was a traveling salesman who spent years looking for something disposable, a product people would throw away and buy again. He landed on a thin stamped steel razor blade. Born on January 5, 1855, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Gillette worked as a cork salesman for the Crown Cork and Seal Company, whose president, William Painter, had invented the disposable bottle cap. Painter told Gillette the secret to wealth was inventing something people used once and discarded. Gillette took the advice literally. He spent eight years trying to make a thin steel blade sharp enough to shave with and cheap enough to throw away. Metallurgists told him it was impossible. In 1901, with help from MIT-educated engineer William Nickerson, he finally produced a workable prototype. He patented the safety razor and founded the American Safety Razor Company. The first year of production, 1903, he sold 51 razors and 168 blades. By 1904, sales had exploded to 90,000 razors and 123,000 blades. The business model was revolutionary: sell the razor handle at or below cost, then profit from the ongoing sale of replacement blades. Customers were locked in once they owned the handle. This "razor-and-blades" model became one of the most replicated business strategies in history. Inkjet printers, video game consoles, and Apple's hardware ecosystem all follow the pattern Gillette established. Beyond business, Gillette was an eccentric utopian who wrote a book proposing that all industry be consolidated into a single corporation governed by engineers. Nobody took the politics seriously. Everyone bought the blades. He died in 1932 in Los Angeles.