To say that the Swiss Army knife is the world’s most portable and indispensable tool understates the case, for the Swiss Army knife escapes the terrestrial to skim the heavens as part of the space shuttle’s standard kit. Indeed the Swiss Army knife is the only gadget equally at home performing repairs on delicate equipment miles above the earth’s surface, journeying with adventurers to the earth’s most punishing environments, opening tins of pâté for a déjeuner sur l’herbe in a bucolic woodland, or being admired as a design icon in the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Munich’s State Museum for Applied Arts and Design.
With its flashy vermillion casing punctuated by the blinding white trademark shield and cross, the Swiss Army knife is widely recognized as the paragon of utility. Dozens of models have been developed in its more than 100 year history: the largest, a collector’s item appropriately called “The Giant,” weighs two pounds, costs $1,400, and contains some 87 multi- tasking implements that can perform 112 functions, anticipate almost any mechanical need, while more basic, and considerably lighter and cheaper, knives contain a few nimble tools that adroitly handle quotidian tasks, from opening cans and bottles and pulling corks to tightening screws and loosening bolts.
The Swiss Army knife contains a host of contradictions for the modern user. Switzerland has been officially neutral since signing the Hague Convention of 1907, yet the knife’s signature blood red color, simultaneously cheerful and chilling, subtly reminds us of its origins as a tool in support of war. Developed in 1891 by the Swiss cutler Karl Elsener, the original Swiss Army knife was called the ‘Soldier’s Knife,” and was born of the significant changes in the way that warfare was conducted in the later nineteenth century. The first model sported what was then a traditional-looking black handle that housed a large blade, not unlike the pocketknives that had been carried for centuries throughout Europe. What made the Soldier’s Knife unique were the two extra tools that could neatly fold into its chubby grip: a screwdriver, needed to dismantle for cleaning the rifles issued by the Swiss government to its enlisted men, and a can opener, needed to exploit the new technology of canned foods. These three elements, united, created an apparatus of unsurpassed practicality in an era when governments were newly responsible for providing their armies with the necessities of modern warfare: industrially produced weaponry and industrially produced food.
A few years later, Elsener made a huge technological leap in the knife’s design when he perfected a spring that could allow more tools to be folded into the same space….
Traveling Tools
by Cathy Kaufman
To say that the Swiss Army knife is the world’s most portable and indispensable tool understates the case, for the Swiss Army knife escapes the terrestrial to skim the heavens as part of the space shuttle’s standard kit. Indeed the Swiss Army knife is the only gadget equally at home performing repairs on delicate equipment miles above the earth’s surface, journeying with adventurers to the earth’s most punishing environments, opening tins of pâté for a déjeuner sur l’herbe in a bucolic woodland, or being admired as a design icon in the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Munich’s State Museum for Applied Arts and Design.
With its flashy vermillion casing punctuated by the blinding white trademark shield and cross, the Swiss Army knife is widely recognized as the paragon of utility. Dozens of models have been developed in its more than 100 year history: the largest, a collector’s item appropriately called “The Giant,” weighs two pounds, costs $1,400, and contains some 87 multi- tasking implements that can perform 112 functions, anticipate almost any mechanical need, while more basic, and considerably lighter and cheaper, knives contain a few nimble tools that adroitly handle quotidian tasks, from opening cans and bottles and pulling corks to tightening screws and loosening bolts.
The Swiss Army knife contains a host of contradictions for the modern user. Switzerland has been officially neutral since signing the Hague Convention of 1907, yet the knife’s signature blood red color, simultaneously cheerful and chilling, subtly reminds us of its origins as a tool in support of war. Developed in 1891 by the Swiss cutler Karl Elsener, the original Swiss Army knife was called the ‘Soldier’s Knife,” and was born of the significant changes in the way that warfare was conducted in the later nineteenth century. The first model sported what was then a traditional-looking black handle that housed a large blade, not unlike the pocketknives that had been carried for centuries throughout Europe. What made the Soldier’s Knife unique were the two extra tools that could neatly fold into its chubby grip: a screwdriver, needed to dismantle for cleaning the rifles issued by the Swiss government to its enlisted men, and a can opener, needed to exploit the new technology of canned foods. These three elements, united, created an apparatus of unsurpassed practicality in an era when governments were newly responsible for providing their armies with the necessities of modern warfare: industrially produced weaponry and industrially produced food.
A few years later, Elsener made a huge technological leap in the knife’s design when he perfected a spring that could allow more tools to be folded into the same space….