Everybody wants to rule the world.
From the urban planning library at Cornell University:
Selected, Edited, and Provided with Headnotes
by
John W. Reps
Professor Emeritus, Cornell University
METROPOLIS.
King Champ Gillette
Gillette, The Human Drift. (Boston: New Era Publishing Co., 1894. Reprint: Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, Inc., 1976):88-112.
Before perfecting his invention of the safety razor and founding what became a major American industrial and sales enterprise, King Camp Gillette (1855-1932) authored several books and pamphlets calling for radical changes in the country's economic and social system. The first of these polemical tracts, The Human Drift, called for the establishment of an ideal society to be created by The United Company "Organized for the purpose of Producing, Manufacturing, and Distributing the Necessities of Life."Except for agricultural and other rural pursuits, all activities and all the population would be concentrated in one gigantic urban complex that Gillette called "Metropolis." Although Gillette's book has been regarded as part of the tradition of utopian romances like the better-known Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy, it can also be looked on as a serious, if misguided, proposal for organizing the urban world. Gillette was a tinkerer and inventor, and "Metropolis" represents his verbal working model of a new kind of city. One wonders how many later planners or urban theorists knew of his book and how he thought a modern city should be ordered. He anticipates by many years Le Corbusier's concept of widely-separated, lofty skyscrapers, although it seems unlikely this Swiss-French designer would have seen The Human Drift. Much closer in time and space is the proposed hexagonal city plan by Charles Rollinson Lamb in 1904. Lamb might have found inspiration for his own less drastic vision of the city of tomorrow in Gillette's writings. Or, perhaps Walter Burley Griffin, deeply interested in city planning and seeking whatever writing existed on this subject, came across Gillette's hexagonal system. This may either have confirmed his own ideas about the use of geometric forms or set him to considering how this might be done. Griffin's design incorporating hexagons and octagons that won first prize in the competition for the plan of Canberra, Australia in 1912 may thus have had partial origins in Lamb's or Gillette's hexagonal city designs.Under a perfect economical system of production and distribution, and a system combining the greatest elements of progress, there can be only one city on a continent, and possibly only one in the world. There would be outlying groups of buildings in different sections of the country for the accommodation of those who were, for limited periods, in the field of labor, and also others that would be occupied as resorts of pleasure in season; but the great and only "Metropolis" would be the home of the people.
Having this idea in view, the location of the great city requires thoughtful and careful consideration, it being, in fact, the heart of a vast machine, to which over the thousands of miles of arteries of steel the raw material of production would find its way, there to be transformed in the mammoth mills and workshops into the lifegiving elements that would sustain and electrify the mighty brain of the whole, which would be the combined intelligence of the entire population working in unison, but each and every individual working in his own channel of inclination. For many reasons I have come to the conclusion that there is no spot on the American continent, or possibly in the world. that combines so many natural advantages as that section of our country lying in the vicinity of the Niagara Falls, extending east into New York State and west into Ontario. The possibility of utilizing the enormous natural power resulting from the fall, from the level of Lake Erie to the level of Lake Ontario, some 330 feet is no longer the dream of enthusiasts, but is a demonstrated fact. Here is a power, which, if brought under control, is capable of keeping in continuous operation even manufacturing industry for centuries to come, and, in addition supply all the lighting;, facilities, run all the elevators, and furnish the power necessary for the transportation system of the great central city....
The manufacturing industries of "Metropolis" would be located east and west of Niagara River in Ontario and New York. The residence portion of the city would commence about ten miles east of Niagara River and Buffalo; and from this point to its eastern extremity, which would include the present city of Rochester in its eastern border, the city would be sixty miles long east and west, and thirty miles in width north and south, lying parallel with Lake Ontario, and about five miles from it.
Water for the purposes of the city could be taken from the elevation of Lake Erie, and discharged as waste into Lake Ontario. As the fall is 330 feet between these two lakes, it is reasonable to suppose that some system might be devised whereby the water required for domestic and city purposes could be made to flow naturally through the city, from one lake to the other, with very little necessity of pumping, and that a large portion of it could be utilized at its outletto generate power.
Another natural advantage of the section for a great city is the conformation of the land, which is comparatively level through this part of New York State, and well adapted for a city such as described.
For the purpose of more clearly locating "Metropolis" in the minds of my readers, I accompany this description with a map of that portion of New York State and country lying in the vicinity of the falls.
The residence portion of the city is given in dotted outline, and lies south and parallel with Lake Ontario, and takes in, in part the counties of Niagara, Erie, Orleans, Wyoming, Livingston Monroe, and Ontario. That section lying between the western boundary of the city and Niagara River and the section immediately west of Niagara River would be utilized for the manufacturing industries of the people. The dotted lines connecting Lakes Erie and Ontario, a distance of from twentyfive to thirty miles, shows the proposed section wherein pipe lines could be laid for the purpose of generating power in the fall of water from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario....
...MUCH MORE
Do click through and prepare to be amazed. Or amused. Or something. Dude was ambitious.
Previously on Gillette:
February 2008
Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business (or King Gillette and the Economics of Tomorrow)
From Wired:
At the age of 40, King Gillette was a frustrated inventor, a bitter anticapitalist, and a salesman of cork-lined bottle caps. It was 1895, and despite ideas, energy, and wealthy parents, he had little to show for his work.
He blamed the evils of market competition.
Indeed, the previous year he had published a book, The Human Drift, which argued that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public and that millions of Americans should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara Falls. His boss at the bottle cap company, meanwhile, had just one piece of advice: Invent something people use and throw away.
One day, while he was shaving with a straight razor that was so worn it could no longer be sharpened, the idea came to him. What if the blade could be made of a thin metal strip? Rather than spending time maintaining the blades, men could simply discard them when they became dull. A few years of metallurgy experimentation later, the disposable-blade safety razor was born. But it didn't take off immediately.
In its first year, 1903, Gillette sold a total of 51 razors and 168 blades. Over the next two decades, he tried every marketing gimmick he could think of. He put his own face on the package, making him both legendary and, some people believed, fictional. He sold millions of razors to the Army at a steep discount, hoping the habits soldiers developed at war would carry over to peacetime. He sold razors in bulk to banks so they could give them away with new deposits ("shave and save" campaigns). Razors were bundled with everything from Wrigley's gum to packets of coffee, tea, spices, and marshmallows....MORE
And the refutation, September 2010
Enough with the history lesson. If you go to Wired for the rest of the story, you'll see where this is going.
"The Razors-and-Blades Myth(s)"
