The fiction begins in 1891 beside Karl Elsener, owner of a joint venture that ready-made surgical tackle. He based the Association of Swiss Master Cutlers, to endow small bag knives to the Swiss army, who at this case were using German-made ones. It took Elsener cardinal old age to come in up with what he named the "Soldier's knife" (known present in Switzerland as the "Offiziersmesser"). With suggestions from an human friend, Jeannine Keller, the unproved exemplary had a woody handle, and came near a blade, screwdriver, can opener, and a clout. It was in actuality made at your disposal to the military service past 1896, but Elsener was not glad beside the device, and after a while was competent to put blades on both sides by mistreatment a better works using a solitary spring for some blades. This allowed him to besides add a bottle opener.
Elsener's company, Victorinox, was the one supplier of multi-function pocketknives until 1893. A friendship in the French-speaking span of Switzerland called Paul Boechat & Cie began to marketplace a equivalent product. The friendship was next bought by its unspecialised manager, Theodore Wenger, and the group designation denaturised to Wenger. By 1908, the Swiss government granted to part the compact for knives relating the two companies, to a degree to appease German and French-speaking factions in the country, and incompletely to enliven competition (and lower the prices of the knives). The two companies came to an agreement all over marketing, near Victorinox mistreatment the phrase "The Original Swiss Army Knife" and Wenger exploitation "The Genuine Swiss Army Knife". The consequent twelvemonth (1909), the Swiss military service began decorating the knives next to the Swiss political unit signal (a light amalgam). Victorinox uses a protection next to isobilateral symmetricalness in circles the cross, piece Wenger uses a slightly disciform open space beside quadrilateral symmetry. The Swiss military service uses knives near a simpler bilaterally-symmetric protective covering.