A nail clipper (also called a nail trimmer or nail cutter) is a hand tool used to trim fingernails, toenails and hangnails.

General Information

Nail clippers are usually made of stainless steel but can also be made of plastic and aluminium. Two common varieties are the plier type and the compound lever type. All are common household objects. Most nail clippers usually come with another tool attached, which is used to clean dirt out from under nails. A nail clipper often has a miniature file fixed to it to allow rough edges of nails to be manicured. A nail file allows for removal of any excess nail that is jagged or has been missed. The nail clipper consists of a head which may be concave or convex. Specialized nail clippers which have convex clipping ends are intended for trimming toenails, while concave clipping ends are for fingernails.  

The inventor of the nail clipper is not exactly known, but the first United States patent for an improvement in a finger-nail clipper (implying such a device already existed) seems to be in 1875 by Valentine Fogerty.  

Around 1906, the L.T. Snow company   manufactured nail cutters.  Around 1908  (or 1911), the King Klip Company of New York manufactured nail cutters.