05/24/2007

Swiss knife is gadgetry gone wild

By Betty Werth
Local columnist bwestrope@
hotmail.com

Read Betty's past columns here

One of the cool graduation gifts our sons received last year was a Swiss Army knife with more than the usual round of attachments.

Besides a knife blade, can opener, scissors, pliers and pen, this one has a small red flashlight and, even better, a 512 megabyte USB port (in the event one needs to make an "emergency download”).

The lads of course were thrilled. Not possessing the "Inspector Gadget” gene, I never really appreciated the little Swiss Army knife because I could never get it open without 1) breaking a nail and 2) saying a whole string of bad little Swiss words (Oh, Schwinehundscheisskopfpeffernugenhausendorfen!).

Besides that, I've never understood why military folk around the world would adopt a tool from the Swiss Army, which is not exactly the last word in military effectiveness. When is the last time the Swiss won a war? When is the last time they even fought in a war? (Maybe the reason the Swiss insist on being "neutral” is because in those uniforms, they're either neutral or dead. I don't know what the regular Swiss Army wears, but the Swiss guards for the pope wear those blue-and-yellow striped numbers that are camouflage only if you are fighting your way across a renaissance festival.)

But, costumes aside, the Swiss ARE famously good at watches and banking and if any nation should be clever at hiding a whole variety of little assets inside an innocent-looking container, I suppose it would be the Swiss. I read that the first Swiss Army knife developed by Karl Elsener toward the end of the 19th century had a blade, screwdriver, can opener and a punch. (A punch? Does that mean a thing that makes a little round hole in paper? What army goes into battle needing a punch? "Company, Halt! Present Notebooks! Punch, Ho!”)

The most complex modern Swiss Army knife I've read about has 29 tools with which you can do anything from digging a well to launching an invasion. I suppose the two Swiss companies that make the thing adapt it to almost any interest, but I got to thinking about what attachments it would have if invented by some other country. Just guessing of course, but here are the attachments I think you might get on the:

• French Army knife — Corkscrew, cheese grater and the phrase, "We hate everyone,” in eight languages.

• Iraqi Army knife — Two attachments: a white flag and a bomb, made so that the latter fits inside the former.

• The American Army knife — 29 attachments, as in 27 video games, a remote control and a bag of chips.

• The Canadian Army knife — Duct tape, hockey stick and bear repellent.

• The Korean Army knife — A teeny tiny car and a nuclear warhead.

• The Mexican Army knife — Map of the U.S. and a job application.

Reach Betty Werth at bwestrope@hotmail.com