Official News page 6

REAL LIFE NEWS: THE ROMAN SWISS ARMY CUTLERY

by Hazed

The Swiss Army knife is the multi-tool used the world over, combining a number of different blades with other useful utensils such as a corkscrew, a screwdriver, and the famous thing for getting stones out of horses' hooves. But the Swiss Army weren't the first to use such a gadget.

No, it turns out that the Romans had something very similar. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, has on display a gadget they have labeled a "compound utensil". It consists of a pointy blade, a fork, a spatula, a spike and a pick. If that's not a prototype Swiss Army knife, I don't know what is!

The gadget was originally catalogued and described in books back in 1988, but it's only since the museum put pictures of its collection on the website that an eagle-eyed viewer pointed out its similarity to the modern multi-tool.

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