Manual clippers

Manual clippers

Manually operated clipper

Hair clippers are operated by a pair of handles which are alternately squeezed together and released.

Barbers used them to cut hair close and fast. The hair was picked up in locks and the head was rapidly depilated. Such haircuts became popular among boys, mostly in schools, and young men in the military and in prisons.

While they were widely used in the past, the advent and reduction in cost of electric hair clippers has led to their largely replacing manual clippers. Some barbers in Western countries continue to use them for trimming. They are also used in the Russian army: when conscripts enter bootcamp, they cut their hair close to the skin, sometimes using manual clippers.^[1]

In Greece male students had their heads shaved with manual hair clippers from the early 20th century until it was abolished in 1982. The same practice was used in the military, where recruits had their heads shaved as they set foot in the boot camp. In the 1950s and 1960s a law was implemented in Greece whereby head shaving with manual clippers was to be used as a punishment for young people caught by police, such as teddyboys and prostitutes. This practice was extended to Greek hippies and leftist youths during the 1967-73 military regime. Obligatory hair clipping was abolished in Greece in 1982.

Manual hair clippers are used extensively by barbers in India to give short back and sides haircuts.