Tales of Future Past v2

You may not know the man, but you know the razors. King Camp Gillette (1855-1932) made his fortune at the turn of the last century when he invented a razor with disposable steel blades and soon discovered that the real money was in selling the blades and not the razors. Not content with causing millions of men to walk around in the morning with bits of toilet paper stuck to their faces, Gillette used his time and fortune to promote various utopian socialist ideas for a more efficient world  run by engineers.

As part of his efficiency drive, Gillette recommended building a gigantic city in the vicinity of Niagara Falls made up of forty thousand buildings like these, which would hold the entire population of North America. Maybe he thought it would relieve the pressure on the beaches at Cancun.

When I first saw the plans for these huge structures with their circular design grouped around a huge glassed-in atrium it reminded me of some other building: the Panopticon.

That's a Victorian prison.

Previous/Next