The story begins in 1891 beside Karl Elsener, controller of a organization that made medical procedure kit. He founded the Association of Swiss Master Cutlers, to hand over small bag knives to the Swiss army, who at this occurrence were victimization German-made ones. It took Elsener 5 geezerhood to come in up with what he called the "Soldier's knife" (known today in Switzerland as the "Offiziersmesser"). With suggestions from an engineer friend, Jeannine Keller, the artistic standard had a wooden handle, and came near a blade, screwdriver, can opener, and a punch. It was in reality made addressable to the army since 1896, but Elsener was not joyous near the device, and in the fullness of time was competent to put blades on both sides by victimization a extraordinary chemical action using a single spring for both blades. This allowed him to as well add a bottle screw.
Elsener's company, Victorinox, was the solitary contributor of multi-function pocketknives until 1893. A establishment in the French-speaking occupation of Switzerland titled Paul Boechat & Cie began to activity a the same goods. The joint venture was future bought by its pandemic manager, Theodore Wenger, and the company identify denatured to Wenger. By 1908, the Swiss political affairs distinct to gap the contract for knives involving the two companies, somewhat to soothe German and French-speaking factions in the country, and partly to stir enmity (and subjugate the prices of the knives). The two companies came to an understanding complete marketing, with Victorinox exploitation the expression "The Original Swiss Army Knife" and Wenger using "The Genuine Swiss Army Knife". The next time period (1909), the Swiss service began decorating the knives next to the Swiss political unit badge (a light negotiate). Victorinox uses a protection beside symmetric symmetry around the cross, spell Wenger uses a a bit coiled gathering place with multilateral symmetricalness. The Swiss regular army uses knives with a simpler bilaterally-symmetric protective cover.