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Including up to a 15.6 inch wide screen laptop, the Swissgear Synergy computer backpack is full of padding and pockets to keep all of your electronic gadgets secure and safe!
With a regulation single blade folding knife, it dates back to 1886 when the Swiss Army decided to equip every soldier. A new rifle was introduced in 1889. A screwdriver was needed to disassemble the rifle. So a decision was made to create a multipurpose tool incorporating a can opener, reamer, screwdriver and knife: The Swiss Army Knife. The cutlery industry in Switzerland was well established but incapable of mass production at that time.
So the knives were made in Solingen, Germany. A Swiss cutler, however, soon established a knife manufacturing company, and began to make army knives, today named Victorinox. Shortly after in 1893 in the Delemont valley at Courtetelle, Paul Boechat & Cie (the future Wenger), the second industrial cutlery manufacturer of Switzerland, received a contract from the Swiss Army to produce knives.
A group of entrepreneurs from Delemont bought Boechat in 1895, and at Courtetelle built a new plant. Theodore Wenger was hired to be its General Manager about two years later. Theodore Wenger was a minister, the son of a pastor, who had served in the USA. His Swiss wife was homesick and he decided this calling was not for him, so he returned to Switzerland. There, in his father in law's cloth trade, he learned the world of business. He applied for a job at Courtetelle after a few years.
Which he moved to a rented factory in Delemont, one of Wenger's first acts was to acquire a manufacturer of forks and spoons. Then, in 1900, he built a new 18,000 square foot facility there. Now called Fabrique Suisse de Courtetelle at Services, both the Courtetelle cutlery production and the utensil operations were incorporated into the new plant. Wenger acquired Fabrique Suisse a few years later, renamed it Wenger et Cie. and for the next forty years shepherded its growth.
As early as 1893, the company from which Wenger emerged had been a supplier to the Swiss Army, and since 1890, Victorinox, its sister company. Wengers competitor is in the German speaking canton of Schwyz and it is in the French speaking Jura region. The Swiss Government decided in 1908 to use each supplier for half of its requirements, to avoid friction between the two cantons.
So Wenger can state its Swiss Army Knives are genuine, Victorinox can lay claim to being the original. Both must meet identical specifications defined by the Swiss Army and both have been manufacturing Swiss Army Knives for more than 100 years, in any case.
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