The pocket knife is the oldest personal tool still in daily use by a significant portion of the American population. It predates the automobile, the railroad, the telegraph, and the United States itself. The folding knife was a Mediterranean invention -- Roman legionaries carried folding knives; medieval merchants used them for cutting quill pens. The pocket knife as Americans understand it -- the folding slip-joint knife with one or more blades that fold into the handle without a locking mechanism -- is an English product.
Sheffield, England became the center of cutlery production in the 14th century and remains the most significant cutlery city in the English-speaking world. The combination of local iron deposits, water power from the River Don, and the coalfields of South Yorkshire created ideal conditions for metalworking. Sheffield steel was the standard against which all other cutlery steel was measured for five centuries. When American cutlery production began in the 19th century, it largely replicated Sheffield patterns and Sheffield methods.
The American pocket knife tradition crystallized around three designs. The stockman pattern -- three blades in a three-inch handle -- was the farmer's and cowboy's knife: a clip blade for general cutting, a sheepfoot blade for slicing, and a spey blade for castrating livestock. The trapper pattern -- two blades -- was the mountain man's knife, lighter and simpler. The Barlow knife -- a single blade in an elongated handle -- was the boy's first knife, the knife that Tom Sawyer carried.
Case Cutlery in Bradford, Pennsylvania and Buck Knives in Post Falls, Idaho are the two American pocket knife manufacturers with continuous production histories that reflect this tradition. Case has been making slip-joint pocket knives since 1889. Buck introduced the locking liner folder in 1964 with the Model 110 Hunter, which became the best-selling folding knife in American history. Both companies still make their knives in the United States.
The Swiss Army Knife -- the Victorinox Spartan pattern, or the Wenger Ranger -- represents a different tradition: the multi-tool pocket knife, designed to be everything at once. The Swiss Army knife was developed by Karl Elsener in 1891 to give Swiss soldiers a tool that could both open food tins and disassemble the Schmidt-Rubin rifle. The design has not fundamentally changed since 1897. It is not the best knife for any single task, but it is the most useful tool for fifty tasks that each come up infrequently.
The modern pocket knife market has fragmented into collector knives (high-end custom or limited production), everyday carry (EDC) knives designed for practical daily use, and traditional patterns from the major American and European manufacturers. The traditional patterns are the correct starting point for anyone who wants a knife they will actually use: the Case Trapper, the Buck 110, the Victorinox Spartan. Each has been tested in continuous daily use by millions of people over decades. Their designs are not accidents.
What the pocket knife teaches is the relationship between a sharp edge and useful work. A knife that is not sharp is dangerous -- more force is required to make it cut, which leads to loss of control. A sharp knife is safe because it cuts where directed. Sharpening is the fundamental skill of knife ownership, and it is one of the few skills that remains entirely manual, entirely tactile, and entirely dependent on the attention and practice of the person doing it.