Swiss army knife celebrates 125 years in business

Make your own Swiss army knife - who could resist such a challenge? Indeed, visitors are queuing up to try out one of the highlights of a new exhibition at the Forum for Swiss History in Schwyz. It's the brain child of curator Pia Schubiger.

"The army knife has really become a cult object," Schubiger said. "Everyone here knows it and has one."

Schubiger said that in her father's generation, it was tradition for fathers to pass their knives on to their sons, and to tell them "every good Swiss boy has a pocket knife."

"That phenomenon interested us and we wanted to know how this cult came about," she said.

A simple idea

The Swiss army knife had very humble origins, said Carl Elsener, chief executive of knife maker Victorinox. His great-grandfather started his business in 1884 in a small village called Ibach.

"He was manufacturing different knives for the kitchen, for farmers, for small boys and so on, and then he learned that the Swiss army had decided to buy a knife for every Swiss soldier," Elsener said.

He seized the opportunity and designed a simple soldier's knife which the army loved.

"The first knife for the Swiss army had black wooden handles, a large blade, a screw driver to clean the gun, and it had a tin opener," Elsener said. "But it was a bit heavy and bulky, so he designed a new one, more elegant, with a cork screw."

It was called the "Schweizer Offizier Messer" or Swiss officer's knife.

"Then after the Second World War, we had all these American soldiers in Europe, and they bought the knives in huge quantities in the PX stores, as souvenirs of Europe," Elsener said. "But it was too difficult for them to say Schweizer Offizier Messer, so they just called it the Swiss army knife, and that's the name it's now known as all over the world."

Enormous success

Knife expert Urs Wyss shows visitors at the exhibition some designs that never got off the production line.

"This one here has a special blade to cut cheese in always the same dimension of the slices," Wyss said. "We think this is not necessary, you can also cut cheese with the blade."

There simply aren't enough people who need cheese of exactly the same size - not even in Switzerland, he said.

But despite one or two false starts like the cheese blade, the Swiss army knife has become an enormously successful global brand. Twenty armies around the world use a version of it. Swiss army knives have been to the summit of Mount Everest and are even standard issue for space shuttle crews.

Elsener said he believes his great-grandfather would have been surprised.

"I don't expect that he ever had the idea that the Swiss army knife would go in the whole world and become a symbol for Swiss quality and reliability," Elsener said. "I think, for him, his vision was simply, in his small workshop, to manufacture a knife for the Swiss army."

Author: Imogen Foulkes in Schwyz (sac)

Editor: Rob Turner