(Weather forecast) The Rich and Active History of The Swiss Army Knife
No commentsBy Carlton Payne
What is one thing that has seen wars, opened gazillions of canned beans, corned beef, soup, bottled colas, and beer, and is now sitting prettily at the New York Museum of Art? Your guess is as good as mine. It’s the ever faithful Swiss Army knife.
The Soldier’s Valet
Forty-four years after the last armed conflict on Swiss territory, Karl Elsener designed the first prototype of the Swiss Army knife. This creative burst of genius was triggered by his indignation that the Swiss Army was issuing German-made pocket knives to their soldiers.
His first design had a cutting blade, can opener, a punch, and a screwdriver - the perfect mechanism for soldiers who had no time for an extra baggage. Five years later, he added a spring mechanism that secured two additional cutters on both sides of the handle. What made him add a corkscrew is something worth pondering - but it was heaven sent.
The soldiers could do a lot of things with one small device - uncork a bottle of wine, whittle wood, mince onions, fix a loose screw, and clean their fingernails.
This invention soon invaded the US Army. Finding it hard to say Offiziersmesser the GI Joes called it the Swiss Army knife, and the name stuck. Today 116 years later, Elsener’s invention is as multi-tasking as ever with added features such as the miniature scissors and the hair tweezers. The soldier’s valet indeed marched with the times.
Is that a Swiss Army Knife?
Elsener sold his invention under the Victorinox label. Victorinox was coined from the combination of Victoria and inox, in honor of his mother Victoria and the stainless steel or inox he used for his knives.
The famous utility knife invaded the golfing greens and is now on cyber mode with the latest Cybertool 34. Golfers have a use for the one handed divot repair tool, one handed removable ball marker, and groove cleaner. Computer technicians have uses for the 34 features of the Cybertool. It includes a bit wrench and a set of precision instruments for computers.
There’s the Victorinox Swiss Memory USBs that boasts of a 256 and 512 MB memory sticks. These are compatible with Windows 98SE/ME/2000/MAC OS X, OS 8.6 and higher. These can be used also on a Linux 2.4 and higher.
The Swiss Army knife with USBs includes different features like the LED light, scissors, blade, and retractable ballpoint pen.
Not to be outdone, Wenger, another manufacturer, has come up with beautiful Swiss Army knife money clips. What do you know? This knife that comes with a limited lifetime warranty has bells and whistles, making it easy to locate from a sea of generic army knives.
Great Gift Items
No one can resist a Swiss Army knife. It’s like a tool shed or office to go. With its varied features and premium artisanship, who will say no? If you are thinking of functional, then get these while these are on sale. For a personal touch to the gift, have a special note inscribed. Just in time for the holidays, right?
For tips on growing broad beans and bean trellis, visit the Types Of Beans website.
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On The LG KE850 Prada
By Arnoldo Watson
Over the last couple of years, there have been many mobile phones that have looked as well as they’ve performed. Some that spring to mind are the Nokia 8800 series, and the LG Chocolate models. Not only did they offer a host of features to compete with the best mobile phones already on the market, but they also looked beautiful into the bargain. Now, one of these companies has done it again, and that company is LG, with its stunning new KE850 Prada mobile phone.
Not for the first time has a mobile phone company collaborated with an external source to design a phone (as was seen by the Motorola Red series, among others). However, this is surely one of the first times that such a high-profile name like Prada has been involved, and the results speak for themselves. Sleek, sexy, sophisticated and elegant; these are all words that are bandied about whenever the name Prada is mentioned, and the LG KE850 mobile phone follows suit.
With absolutely no buttons on the fascia (unless you count two miniscule options for calling) to speak of, this allows the screen to almost cover the whole length of the front of the phone. The reason this is possible? Touch screen technology. Although Ericsson may claim that they had this first with their stylus operated mobile communicator, that company certainly never had the sheer aesthetic stylings of LG’s latest masterpiece. And the icing on the cake surely has to be when the display fades when not in use, leaving you with a sheer screen and a phone not too dissimilar in looks to Sony’s wonderfully designed PSP handheld.
However, if you think the phone’s design is impressive, wait until you see the features it manages to incorporate into its slim case. As well as the usual 2.0 mega pixel camera, it also features:
MPEG4 video player for the latest and sharpest video compression
Music multitasking for messaging, allowing file downloads and transfers
Document viewer, including Excel and Word doc support
Bluetooth 2.0, the latest version of this excellent transfer tool
As well as this, the LG KE850 Prada mobile phone also allows you to upgrade the memory capacity via its USB slot, so that even if its already generous internal memory is not enough, it can be easily increased.
Indeed, if there’s one drawback to the phone, it’s that it is only tri-band whereas most phones are now quad-band. Although this won’t affect its use in its home and desired customer territories, it will mean it won’t work in the US. However, if you’re looking for both a stylish and feature-filled phone and you’re not in that part of the world, you can’t do much better than LG’s new superstar.
For tips on basketball warm up drills and coaching girls basketball, visit the Basketball Tactics website.
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 10:55 pm and is filed under science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
