Nail clipper

The Book of Deuteronomy exhorts in 21:12 that a man, should he wish to take a captive as a wife, "shall bring her home to [his] house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails".

A reference is made in Horace's Epistles, written circa 20 BC, to "A close-shaven man, it's said, in an empty barber's booth, penknife in hand, quietly cleaning his nails.

"[1] The first United States patent for an improvement in a finger-nail clipper was filed in 1875 by Valentine Fogerty.

[6] Filings for finger-nail clippers include, in 1881, those of Eugene Heim and Celestin Matz,[7] in 1885 by George H. Coates (for a finger-nail cutter),[8] in 1886 by Hungarian Inventor David Gestetner and in 1905 by Chapel S. Carter[9] with a later patent in 1922.

[13] In 1947, William E. Bassett (who started the W. E. Bassett Company in 1939) developed the "Trim"-brand nail clipper,[14] using the superior jaw-style design that had been around since the 19th century, but adding two nibs near the base of the file to prevent lateral movement, replacing the pinned rivet with a notched rivet, and adding a thumb-swerve in the lever.

A variety of nail clippers; the clipper on the left is in the plier style; the centre and right clippers are in the compound lever style
Razor (top) and nail cutter with bone handle (bottom) found in a grave of the Hallstatt culture ( c. 6th–8th centuries BC)
Roman nail clipper made of bronze, 3rd to 4th century AD
1902 advertisement from Good Housekeeping for Carter's nail cutter, produced by the H. C. Cook Company of Ansonia, Connecticut