Echoing sentiments around the straight, the safety razor is a simple enough device that holds the blade close enough to the face to shave without the risk of beaching the edge into the skin. The straight is the cleanest design, although not the safest and do remember that many of the first safety razors were simply wedge holders, the wedge being "an inch or so of hollow ground straight edge".
Across something like 1000 safety razors that have come through my hands going back to the 1880s, I really can't fault the 1912 (or 1919 as it really should be known). I also can't fault the Gillette 1904 patent, nor Autostrop's early line like the 7 O'Clock or Valet (especially the VC1). Indeed, blade technology no doubt improved over time with one or two real classics alongs the way.
Consider this, though ...
For razors, mass production has inevitably led to a razor that is cheaper to produce and so we could argue that razors themselves reached a peak somewhere. Gillette, for example, say a most definite cheapening of materials and so quality of razor from the 1950s. Their Tech was really quite something in the 1940s but by the 1960s we're seeing a shade of its former self and by the 1970s, a really poor item by comparison. Likewise, the 1912 hit production excellence by the end of the 1940s but later examples saw the thickness of the sheet metal thinning, and I have a very late example which really is poor.
For blades, it was all about the quality from the 1910s onwards, with each blade being a genuine technological improvement over the last, either in material or production finesse. Again, mass production saw miles and miles of blade ribbon being cut into single blades each day. Technology got about as far as it could and so any improvement was purely in the marketing ... stainless, teflon, titanium edge, medical, lab, etc.
Most recently, cartridges have actually pretty good blades, but cost a fortune and so we hit this final nail on the head - it's not about technical excellence either in the razor or the blade, but in the marketing to give the illusion of improvement with each new generation. That, and an ever more convoluted means of locking the buyer into an exclusive format that keeps a good step ahead of the interest rate.
So, yes, both razors and blades have got better ... but they have (both) reached their peak some decades ago. What used to be a battle of which was genuinely best is now a war of marketing.
