Swiss Army Knives
Whatever happened to the Swiss army knife? Fraser, Nick and Peter explore the history and appeal of the pocket-sized multi-tool.
From the Swiss army knife to printers, sporks and cycling tools, the team considers what makes combining functions worthwhile and when adding another feature makes everything less useful. Along the way, they discuss the enormous Wenger Giant, the case for specialist tools, and whether a world where everything fits together inevitably loses something along the way.
The 'Wenger Giant' - https://sakukshop.com/product/wenger-giant/
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Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast brought to you by Aleph Insights and produced by me, Fraser McGruer.
I'm here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights.
On this podcast, we look at a wide range of topics from an analytical viewpoint.
And today we're discussing Swiss army knives.
Nick, lead us in.
Speaker B:Well, when I was a teenager, it feels like every lad had a Swiss army knife.
And I say lad because I went to a boys school, so I can only really talk about that.
But yeah, very popular now.
You know, we'll.
things have changed since the:They don't seem to be a big thing.
And then it occurred to me, actually, that I seem to remember when I was on holiday, you would always go past a shop window which had a giant mechanical Swiss army knife in it with rotating blades and how cool that was.
And, you know, and you would look at them, you go, you know, really big one.
How many tools has that got?
So have they disappeared?
And if so, why?
Is it because they're no longer useful, or is it for some other reason?
And then I think we probably want to talk about what is it that makes a multi tool like the Swiss army knife useful in the first place?
And has the world got more or less amenable to multi tools?
So nice.
Speaker A:Great.
Okay, here we go.
Speaker B:Kick off with the history of the Swiss army knife.
It's not as boring as it sounds.
Speaker A:Yes, that's a brilliant place to start.
Speaker B:Right, so the Swiss army essentially commissioned it.
They specified the need for it because they had.
In the:I know nothing about this, but apparently you need a screwdriver to maintain it.
And at the same time, canned food was becoming a thing.
And so they realized that they needed a sort of thing that could be a knife and a can opener and a screwdriver and a reamer.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, you got to have a reamer.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Imagine going a day without a reamer.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Anyway, the, the.
So they, they.
s originally called the Model:The two main companies being Victorinox and Wenger.
Now, Victorinox actually was originally called the Messer fabric.
Carl Elsner.
Speaker A:Catchy.
Speaker B:And it was only when his dear old mum died, Victoria, that he named the company Victorinox allegedly because of a combination of Victoria and the French for stainless steel, which is asier anoxidable.
I don't know how true any of this is, but I found it on the Internet.
But anyway, first big customer of course for this new exciting knife was the Swiss Army.
The German Army.
Speaker A:Oh, the Germans, yeah.
Speaker B:Because the Swiss army is not very big, at least compared to the Germans.
So the Germans were actually the main sort of customer to begin with.
And then in:So it wasn't very good to begin with.
It was kind of did the job.
But then it wasn't any.
It was when he invented the spring assembly that.
Where you could attach tools to both sides.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:That it really took off.
So now you could add twice the number of tools into the same width of handle.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So before they all came out the same side, whereas now you can kind of fit them in some in some way.
Peter's the engineer, I'm not.
And.
And that meant that they could add both a small blade and most excitingly of all, the corkscrew.
I suspect they had French army sales in mind but they.
Anyway, the Swiss army didn't to want.
Didn't want that one apparently.
So that became the first commercial spin off.
So then they started to become, you know, sold elsewhere.
Yeah.
As I said, the Swiss army sort of was.
Was buying them from Wenger and Victorinox.
But really they entered the global consciousness during World War II when US servicemen started discovering them in Europe, really loved them.
dered some from Victorinox in:And I think then you start to see this massive expansion.
the late sort of mid to late:And that is this is at the same time where you've got an increase in motoring and camping and hiking, DIY travel, scouting, all of the things that kind of would drive demand for a multi tool.
So Swiss army knife, obviously lots of different configurations.
You can have the cavalry version, you can have the kind of campers version, you can have the hiking version.
So there's that appeal to it.
It's a very male coded sort of thing.
It's not an actual weapon but it sort of feels like it could be and it, you know, and it feels nice and sort of functional and well designed.
Then by the:It was the.
in Their design collection in: the master craftsman model in:So huge.
That explains why Swiss army knives were a big thing during my childhood, because they had become a big thing.
So then what happened?
A few things 25 years ago today on the day we're recording September 11th, where they were able to conduct that operation using nothing more than box cutters.
What you or I would call, yes, Stanley knives.
So in quarter four,:Massive impact then, of course.
Well, there's a good reason why kids no longer carry Swiss army knives.
And it's because knives in school are a bit of a no no these days.
So you know that who kids carrying knives is has been something we've really been trying to discourage.
Speaker A:Yes, Wokeism gone crazy.
Speaker B:Exactly.
So anyway, according to Victorinox, they have, during the lifetime of the company, produced 500 million Swiss army knives.
Speaker A:That's a lot.
Speaker B:And they are by far the biggest supplier that is should be one for every 16 people on Earth.
But that surprise surprises me because I feel like at least every man on earth has owned a Swiss army knife at least once in their life.
I know I certainly have.
Peter.
Yeah.
Fraser?
Speaker A:Oh my God.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:And it's a very desirable object.
Right.
They're incredible.
So there you go, that's the Swiss army knife.
It's rise and not exactly fall, but it's rise and gradual.
Gradual sloping off.
Really?
Speaker A:Okay.
Yeah.
Speaker C:So that seems just another reason they got killed off as well.
Speaker B:Well, yeah, go for it.
Speaker A:Okay, well we.
So absolutely, we'll come to that.
And so we've figured out what it is, where it comes from and sketched out a sort of trajectory of sales, et cetera, within its history.
We're getting a little bit into like, hey, sort of, they've sort of.
It feels like they've, you know, declined a little bit and suggested one reason there at least.
And Peter, you've got another reason.
Speaker C:Yeah.
So it's our old nemesis, the mobile phone.
Speaker A:Itself, a wonderful multi tool, but.
Speaker C:Yeah, but that absorbed quite a few things that some of the, some of these multifunction things did.
So I always use a mobile phone.
Speaker A:Now to open my bottles of wine.
Speaker C:Well, there's some things it can't do, but magnifying glass, ruler, compass, torch, pen, stopwatch, thermometer, notepad, all of these things.
Speaker B:Your mobile phone is a pen?
Speaker C:Well, you can write with.
Speaker B:Oh, you can write things on it.
Speaker A:That's right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:So all of these, there were variants of Susami Knights that had all of these things on.
None of them do now because what's the point?
You've got a phone in your pocket.
Things that you can't be boring are the blades, the scissors, corkscrews, all the physical things.
Apple hasn't yet brought out an iPhone with a bottle opener on it, but.
Speaker B:Probably working on it.
Speaker C:You can, at a pinch, use a phone to open a bottle.
Speaker B:Yeah.
The way Apple would do it was they would start selling wine which had this cork that only their corkscrew could open.
Speaker C:Yeah.
They'd have a chip inside the.
Speaker B:Yeah.
It has to be an apple corkscrew.
Speaker A:And if you get it wrong, it might accidentally erase all your wine.
Speaker C:Yeah, exactly.
Poisons the wine.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Okay, we might sort of drift into more reasons for decline, but for the moment let's say.
Speaker C:Yeah, let's sort of slightly widen it.
The phone kind of is a principal object of desire for young people these days.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
And actually, but you can see some overlap in as much as, like I said, a mobile phone is a multi tool and as you say, in itself, therefore, hey, we could have this sort of analog multi tool, but we can also have a digital multi tool, which maybe that's one of the reasons why it sort of might replace.
I don't know.
Anyway, what else do we want to say?
Do we want to continue to talk about the evolution of their functionality or not or.
Yeah, yeah, go on then.
Because also one of the things about these is like, how much is too much and you know, what's enough tools?
Speaker B:Well, we'll get onto that for sure.
So if you look at how the functionality of the Swiss army knife has evolved, there's essentially two different dimensions.
One is adding a new blade, which they've obviously done a lot.
You know, you've got your nail files and your scissors.
I mean, there's probably, you know, there's your classic four, which it started with.
And then you've got things like the corkscrew that you've got the nail file, you know, those kinds of things.
Speaker A:The reamer.
Speaker B:The reamer.
I mean, you know, as I said, probably the most important element of the, of the Swiss army knife, but they've also done basically added functions to existing blades, which I think is quite interesting.
So they, they, for example, the bottle opener is also a 6 millimeter screwdriver.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker B:And I think in the 70s they made the crucial decision to add the wire stripper notch.
It's a little notch.
So they kind of discovered.
Oh, you know, we could squeeze a notch into that thing.
Hey presto.
Suddenly it's three.
Three fun.
The nail file is also a nail cleaner and a metal saw.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker B:The can opener also ends in a 3 millimeter screwdriver.
So yeah, pretty cool.
Speaker A:So it's nice.
It's not just a question of adding stuff.
It's sort of, hey, the stuff that we is already there or we're adding.
Getting like a multi tool within a multi tool.
Speaker B:Yeah.
So let's keep adding stuff, shall we?
Let me tell you about the Wenger Giant.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B: It was created in: Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:It'll set you back $1,200.
Speaker C:It weighs over a kilogram hefty.
Speaker B:It's over 22 centimeters wide.
That's in other words, the actual handle is 22 centimeters wide to fit all these blades in.
And it includes three kinds of pliers, a bicycle chain, rivet setter.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Probably the big appeal for Peter.
Speaker A:Peter.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:A cigar cutter.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:The golf divot repair tool, a tire tread gauge and a laser pointer.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker B:I mean, I think you'll wonder how you survive without it.
Speaker A:Right.
But also.
Speaker C:And you'll wonder what pocket you're gonna put it in.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Hey, sounds incredibly useful.
Right, Right.
Speaker B:So I think just to sort of set out what is it that makes this completely useless.
Right.
So the reason why do you put multiple things in the same tool in the first place?
And it's.
I think there's three things going on.
One is carriage.
You've got one thing to carry around.
One is components overlap.
So the handle, for example, you've got one handle but five blades.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker B:Right.
So there's an overlap with the components.
And then finally context.
Are you going to need it in those five things in roughly the same.
You know, if you go camping, you might want to need three or four of them.
And so when you're asking that question of.
Well, I'm adding a function.
Speaker A:Sorry, sorry to interrupt.
Is there another element feature to add here, which is efficiency versus a single tool.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:Because it's not just about the weight or, you know, multiple objects.
Right.
Which can feature in carriage, let's say.
But each of those individual tools is probably very good at the job it does versus putting it all together.
First of all, does it remain as good at doing that?
Plus does the fact that you've put it in with other stuff reduce its efficiency?
Speaker B:Yeah.
So I think, you know, to take a sort of economics perspective here, you've got this problem of every time I add a tool, or rather a sort of, you know, blade function, I have added the value of that function, but I've actually, I'm inevitably going to slightly worsen all of the other functions.
So the first time, you know, I've got a 10 out of 10 knife, I then add a corkscrew.
Now I've got a nine out of 10 corkscrew and a nine out of 10 knife.
That's okay.
It's still 18 out of 10.
So, you know, that's fine.
Then you add some third thing and now you've got, you know, three things which are like eight out of ten and you keep.
And eventually you are adding a four out of ten and ten things are getting one point worse.
So there is some optimum there where you've added enough functions that any more would start detracting from the value of the whole thing.
Right.
So the question is, and I think going back to that sort of carriage component overlap context, those are the fundamental drivers of like utility.
When you add a new thing, you know, is this.
Is there a big overlap between the infrastructure?
And obviously like this design of this handle with the special spring mechanism means that, yeah, you can have one handle doing loads and loads of jobs.
So that's, you know, that, that in itself argues for adding more functions.
But at some point, you know, things like carriage, as Peter says, A 1 kilo Swiss army knife stops being as useful as 10 smaller ones.
So.
Yeah, so that's the question really, you know, how do you know when to stop?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:How do you.
When should I.
When should I stop adding stuff?
Speaker A:Yeah.
And as I think we all understand, you know, was it the Venge Giant, whatever it's called?
Yeah, you know, some, some team or bloke or whatever went a bit off beast on that.
But we can see why they did it.
Speaker C:And I suspect Guinness, but, well, world records for the most multifunctional pen knife.
Speaker A:Yeah.
And I suspect it was even before the Wenger thingy Bob.
Right.
The Giant, they would get that.
But nonetheless we can, I think we can understand why they did that.
Nice.
Okay, so we framed it.
Speaker C:We were flexing.
Speaker A:Yeah, there we go.
And great marketing exercise.
Yeah.
Okay.
Brilliant.
We've set out our stall.
So I think what we said is we want to sort of, if we want to agree that there's a kind of a tapering of their presence, remind me what we're going into next.
Speaker B:Well, I think first of all, like, when do you want a multifunctional tool when is it good to have that?
How should we think about, you know, do I add a function to this thing or take a function away?
But also, has the world changed in some way so as to mean that actually it isn't as useful anymore to have a Swiss army knife?
You know, for some reason.
We might touch on some reasons for that.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker C:I think a good way into it might be to make the case for counterexample, where you have the case for a tool that only does one job, a uni tool or a unitask.
Speaker B:I think mono tool is.
Speaker C:Yeah.
So there's a guy I've never heard, I'd never heard of before, Alton Brown.
Ever come across Alton Brown?
Speaker B:Afraid, rings a bell.
Speaker C:He's.
Speaker B:I think I might be getting confused with Moulton Brown, which is that soap that everyone in North London has.
Speaker C:Is it okay?
No, he's so he's a, he's a tv, he's a celebrity chef kind of guy.
Speaker B:Oh yeah, I think I have heard of him.
Speaker C:Yeah.
And he's got a rule which is that the only mono tasker he will allow in his kitchen is a fire extinguisher.
Everything else in his kitchen has got to be a multi purpose tool.
And what he means by multipurpose tools is that he doesn't like gadgets that just do one thing.
He wants people to use basic tools which have lots of purposes.
So kitchen spoon can be used for frying and stirring.
Kitchen knife can be used for all different types of chopping, pots, pans, simple things can be used for all different types of cooking.
Not these little gadgets which do one thing.
Do one thing.
So apart from the fire extinguisher.
And I think that this tells you something interesting because he will allow the mono tool when it does multi stuff.
No, when he allow the mono tool, the tool that the only one he will allow is the fire extinguisher.
And he only allows that because when the failure is sort of so catastrophic or time critical, you want the best possible thing to do that does the job well.
Speaker B:But also it's a legal requirement.
Let's get over that.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:So I think the key lesson from Alton Brown is that when something's so critical that you want the best possible function, then that's when you want the tool that is designed for that one function.
And that's where the fire extinguishers, you want something that's very good at putting out fires, not something that's mediocre at putting out fires, but also does other things.
So I think that is a useful way into this because any multi tool, as Nick has said, you'll sacrifice some of the performance in a given task to accommodate it with other tools to make this object which does multiple things.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Look, I don't want to harp on about this and please, please be patient with me, but is it not the case that even something that is just designed for sticking something in your mouth that's nice and curved shape that is a spoon is.
We can turn anything that's a single design intention into multi design intention?
I'm just putting it out there.
Is it not the case that anything can be a multi tool?
Speaker B:Well, it would be a teaspoon would be a bad screwdriver to the extent that you probably would rather not use it as a screwdriver, but instead use a screwdriver as a screwdriver.
But I think there is something there which is about how we can take a tool designed for one purpose and discover new functionality in it that may not have been designed in.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I'm no doubt this.
There's a creative element to this where someone discovers that, oh, you know, I can actually put the chopped vegetables on the side of this knife if it's wide enough and then use that to pop it in the pan.
You know, that kind of thing.
Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, Nick, move us on and move us into.
I think you would want to talk to us about multifunctional types.
Speaker B:Yeah.
So I think there's actually sort of.
We've been talking about multi tools.
Like we've assumed that there's these tasks out there and you know, we're trying to work out, well, how can we get one tool to do multiple tasks.
But actually that's only one possible response because there's also the approach of trying to change the nature of the tasks so that they're more amenable to being done by one tool.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Which you might call standardization.
So just looking at multi tools to start with, before we get onto standardization, this is where you are adding different functions to the same object.
As I said, there has to be some sort of economy of scale to doing that.
There's got to be some reason why it's useful to do that.
Carriage component or context.
And so, you know, your classic example is the Swiss army knife, but also, for example, the multifunctional device.
Do you know what that is?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:There's actually a thing called a multifunction device.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:It's a printer.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:I only discovered this.
I discovered this about 15 years ago and I was working in the Cabinet Office.
And I was trying to print something and they said, oh, you, why don't you print that?
And I said I need to print it and then I'm going to staple it.
And so.
And they said just use the multifunctional device.
And.
And I could send like I could get 20 copies printed and stapled and it would all just happen automatically.
And I was like, what's it actually called?
You can't just call it the multifunctional device.
Turns out it's actually called the multifunction device.
Speaker A:I feel like somewhere on the key.
Speaker B:Thing is like actually all of those functions.
So scanning, photocopying, printing, they all involve a really complicated thing which is handling sheets of paper.
Right.
So that's where most of the effort in a printer comes.
Right.
It's doing all of that stuff.
So yeah, so it kind of makes sense.
Right.
Then we talked about smartphones.
The tease made.
This was what.
This challenged me because I thought, wait a minute, is a teasemade a really stupid mash up of an alarm clock and a tea making device.
And the answer is no, because it's a genius mashup.
Yeah, but also, but you need the clock.
The top point of the tea's made is it makes a cup of tea when you wake up.
Well, if you've got the clock, obviously you're going to add an alarm to it.
It's a really easy thing to add once you have a clock.
So it's like, well, okay, once we've got washer dryer is a similar thing.
Right.
The.
The infrastructure, which is a big drum that goes round is shared quite a lot between a washer and a dryer.
Spork shares both a handle and.
Yeah, I mean, I love a spork.
Speaker A:I love us.
Speaker B:I did actually try to find stupid.
I was convinced that there must be stupid examples of multi tools.
It's actually rarer than you think and I think because they often don't see the light of day.
But I did, I vaguely recalled it and I did find evidence for it, the pencorder.
And it's a pen that is also a recorder, you know, so you could, you could record up to 40 seconds of audio.
Yeah.
And play it back through a tiny speaker.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Okay.
I can even like a very bad Dictaphone.
Speaker B:Even now my brain is making an argument for why that's a good idea.
But you know, like when I think one of the standard tropes for a wacky inventor is someone who needlessly puts functions together, they're also light up slippers.
A lot of these come from the Innovations catalog, sadly now departed.
And more evidence that, you know, we no longer need multifunctional devices.
But light up slippers again, you can sort of go, well, actually it's dark.
Usually get up, go to the toilet at night, you don't want to turn the main light on.
Light up slippers actually sort of make sense.
Speaker C:So, yeah, I have a little torch in my watch, which I use for that very purpose because it's dim enough to see, but not bright enough to kind of wake you up.
Speaker B:Right, perfect.
But, yeah, so I mean, that's the multi tool idea.
We add more functions to an existing thing.
As I said, there is this kind of standardization approach, which is another strategy, which is where you're trying to slim down the number of tasks that you might have to do so that there's a smaller number of them.
And so that's basically imposing.
Like, you know, we've got flathead or cross head screwdrivers.
99% Of the time, that's what you need.
The difference being, of course, Apple and their weird pentagonal screwdriver.
But also I, I have a Torx screwdriver set.
Peter, explain why I need that.
Speaker C:Because Allen keys won't fit in them or any other.
Yeah, they're just another kind of fastener head.
Speaker B:What's good about them that the other ones just can't do?
Speaker C:There are.
Because of the unique geometry of the curve and the spike, it gives you better torque means.
That means what gives you good torque.
Yes, but also as the head corrodes, you can just use a bigger head, a bigger tool to get.
And you get a similar.
Good.
Speaker B:Really clever.
Yeah, yeah.
Whereas that, you can't really do that with a.
Once your crosshead screw head, Allen keys.
Speaker C:Will just round out as they corrode, whereas these, these corrode and keep the same overall shape, just scaled up.
Speaker B:This is why.
This is why Peter gets the big bucks.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:This kind of engineering insight that makes so much sense.
Then there's, you know, USBs.
Well, I mean, basically we're trying to make everything fit into one hole.
You know, it's like we're just going to have this one standard.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Until Apple comes along.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Metric fasteners, probably the one.
Now, here's what standardization effort has had the biggest impact on the global economy.
This is my own hypothesis, but I.
Speaker C:Think the ISO container.
Speaker B:Indeed.
Speaker A:What's an ISO container?
Speaker B:Shipping containers.
Speaker A:Ah.
Speaker B:If you've ever seen on the Waterfront, classic Marlon Brando film, I've not.
Speaker A:But yeah, keep going.
Speaker B:Well, he works, he's a dock worker and they've all, they've got these, all the dock workers have hooks and they're getting off this wondrous array of tea chests and sacks and a car and all this other like weird shaped stuff.
And it's so obvious really now, but you just think, yeah, shipping containers, it's like, then we only need one type of thing that can do all of the loading and unloading.
Yeah.
Without standard paper sizes, you could not dream of a multifunction device.
So yeah.
So standard standardization and then the other final sort of category, which kind of is a bit of both really is adapters.
And I don't even know if this is a category of its own, but it feels different where you go, right, we've got 10 tools, we've got 10 tasks and a multi tool is like saying, we'll put those 10, we'll try and put all those 10 tools into one thing and hopefully that will do.
Then we've got one tool which does all those tasks, you know, or you know, standardization is, we're going to reduce the number of tasks to just one.
But it feels to me like actually the interface approach is where you go, what we'll have is like we don't know what tasks are going to come out and we don't know what things will need to go in, but we'll have an interface which sort of accepts any kind of input and has a standard output and then the standard output can then be translated into.
So this, the obvious example of this is like APIs in software or something where you go, look, this is, I don't care how you set your server up right.
But if someone is going to give it a command, it's going to be one of these 10 things.
And you know, your email client, you can design it however you want, but this is what an email, however you send it, it needs to, you know, it's going to get turned into this standardized object and then that gets unpacked and turned into however you want it to look in your, in your email client stuff.
It's like the, the idea of having this sort of little interface in the middle where we can have diversity either side.
But I couldn't really think of a reason why that wasn't kind of the same as inventing a multi tool.
But the sorts of examples I was thinking of were things like plug converters.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Where you have a kind of, you know, you've got 20 different plugs that can go in and 20 different that can come out.
And your thing is happy to accept any of them cables with different combination, you know, you can.
We can have 20 different types of input and output hole.
But actually, as long as you've got cables that, you know, you can have one of those cables which has five different things coming out one end and five coming out the other end.
Hey, Presta, that's 25 different connections you can make.
Drill chucks.
Doesn't.
You know, where it just.
You can slot any kind of, you know, it doesn't matter what the thing is.
It'll accept any kind of drill bit.
So, yeah, I couldn't really.
It wasn't very satisfying to me, this.
This idea of an adapter.
But it did feel.
It felt right.
Speaker A:Well, yeah, no, but also what I like what you've said there with the adapter is you can see it as that sort of middle ground or the vehicle that allows both, you know, bunch of stuff that side, bunch of stuff this side, boom, in the middle, I've got this.
But what's interesting about the chuck on a drill is actually it's got one half of that equation, but on the other half, it's just a drill.
But that's fine.
That's no problem.
It's, you know, it's sort of.
It's sort of.
It's akin to it, you know, so.
Yeah, okay, so that's multifunctional types.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I want to come around to something.
Just sort of just revisit a little bit this idea that multifunctional tools has gone away.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:Or not.
Peter, have you got something on that?
Speaker C:Yeah, I don't think they have at all.
I think they're alive and kicking.
They've just become highly specialized.
I'll give a few examples to sort of.
Speaker B:So there's a thing called the highly specialized multi tools.
Speaker C:Highly specialized multi tools.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:That's an interesting concept.
Speaker C:Yeah.
So.
And they sort of centered around, like, I've picked sports and jobs that multitools have been designed specifically for those roles.
So there's the sailor's tool by Merchin, I think it's pronounced.
So it's got a serrated blade, it's got a marlin spike, and it's got shackle pliers.
It's designed and marketed primarily as a sort of safety device that you would carry on your boat, on your ship to sort of cut yourself free if you got caught in ropes or nets.
So that.
Hence the serrated blade.
But the marlin spike, it's a tapered steel Point for splicing, for tying.
For splicing ropes together when you're repairing a line.
Speaker B:Sounds a bit like a reamer to me.
Speaker C:No reamers scratching the inside of a hole.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Maybe it's an awl.
Speaker C:Maybe an awl.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker C:I don't know what an awl is.
And shackle pliers which are turning shackle pins and things on the boat.
So special shackle pins.
Yeah, shackle pins obviously.
Speaker B:Yeah.
You know you're always moaning about not being able to turn your shackle pins over.
Speaker C:Then you get anglers pliers which are again it's a bit like a Swiss army knife.
It's got a knife on it, it's got a hook remover, it's got a disc gorger, whatever that is.
Got a line cutter, a split ring opener, split shot crimper gripper.
Speaker B:A what?
Speaker C:A split shot crimper.
Have you never.
Speaker A:No, sadly not.
I'm missing out on it.
Speaker B:Has he got a grimp scruncher and a dunkelizer.
Speaker C:Got gripping jaws which I guess are pliers and it's got curved forceps.
The nice thing about this is it's marketed as for the fish's benefit.
Really.
It's like having a good hook remover makes it low stress for the fish rather than shoving your hands down in.
Speaker A:What is after all if you didn't.
Speaker B:Fish it out in the first place.
Speaker A:Yeah.
After all it is quite a stressful moment in its life.
So anything we can do to sort of reduce that stress, brilliant.
Speaker C:Okay, but then other reasons.
I mean something other examples.
The cyclist multi tool.
I mean I've got loads of things,.
Speaker B:You've got loads of multi tools.
You know what you should do is get one tool to rule them all.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Talk us through your favorite cycling multi tool.
Speaker C:Well, I just have.
I tend to have them attached to my bike so I have one per bike.
Save moving about.
Speaker A:Well actually if you don't mind, I just occurred to me a question.
Speaker B:Can you share a multi tool story?
Speaker A:Well, yeah, sort of.
I mean I was going to ask at the end but let's do it now.
What's your favorite multi tool?
And it could either be a thing that we all the world thinks of as a one thing and we use that for many things or it could be an actual designed multi tool and let's do that.
Peter, you started to answer.
Describe to us your perfect sort of.
You must have a favorite.
I know we shouldn't have favorites but you've probably got a favorite amongst your Bicycle Multi Tools.
Speaker C:My favorite one is the one I've got to hand.
Speaker A:You got it right now?
Speaker C:No.
Speaker A:Oh, sorry, I'm touching.
The best camera is the one you got on you.
Right.
Speaker C:So, yeah, it's kind of an essential piece of equipment and if you haven't got one, you're in real bind.
But the key thing, all these things are tuned to that job, right?
So the Cyclist Multi Tool doesn't have a knife because you don't need a.
You're not going to need to cut yourself free from a rope when you're on a bike.
But it has got all the hex keys and a spoke key and little wrenches and things on it to deal with common bike malfunctions.
Speaker A:But I want to press you a bit further.
Is there a particular one that's your favorite one you want to bring along with you on a bike ride?
Speaker C:No.
Speaker B:All right.
Desert Island Multi Tool.
Yeah, Island Bike Multi Tool.
Speaker C:There isn't a particular one.
Speaker B:Right.
Well, that's it.
The boat sunk and now he's.
Now he's gonna have to go to his desert island.
Speaker C:I'll just have.
Yeah.
Whichever one I grab first.
Speaker A:Should we persist with my question or drop it for now?
Speaker B:No, it's up to you.
I'm happy to.
Speaker A:Well, look, I mean, I got given a multi tool a couple of years ago.
You will not be surprised to know it was given to me by a grateful student, an ex student of photography.
And the reason they gave it to me, they said, you're always losing stuff, Fraser, but this will, you know, now.
Speaker B:You can lose 10 things at once.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
And what it was, it was a little cool little credit card sized thing that was both a ruler and a bottle opener.
And I think that's all it did.
And then here's the thing, and I stuck it in my wallet and you'd think, you know, well, that's a nice thing, but I bet you never.
I used it all the time, right, When I needed to sort of measure something when I needed.
Couldn't be that long, to be honest, or to have to do it like multiple measuring moments.
But also, of course, you know, opening bottles.
Used it for that all the time.
I was having a lovely time with it and sadly it got confiscated from me.
Okay.
Speaker B:By the airport people.
Speaker A:By the airport people.
Because of course, because it's.
Because it was such a wonderful device.
Its demise was within that.
Right.
It was in my wallet.
Totally forgot about it.
Going through airport security.
Speaker C:Did they have a blade in it then?
Did it?
Speaker A:Don't think so.
Could be wrong.
Speaker C:But on what grounds did they.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Well, it was quite sort of thin and sharp, so you could use it for stuff, I suppose.
Speaker C:And yeah, they do take tweezers.
Yeah.
Speaker A:And so sadly, boom, that was gone.
Speaker B:But I managed to convince them to leave my thinning scissors in my beard trimming bag.
I was surprised by.
Speaker A:Yeah, okay.
Thinning scissors.
I don't know what they are, but I can kind of guess.
But yeah, that was mine.
Speaker C:Can you imagine what I'll look like?
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:They said it would go.
Gosh, you're right.
Speaker A:So they took pity on you.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Was that your favorite multitool or you got.
Well, it's not really it.
No.
Tell us what you got.
Speaker B:My hand, it does all sorts of stuff.
I think.
I think it is pretty awesome hands.
I don't think we give them.
Them the credit that they deserve, but this one plays the piano, writes things.
Speaker A:That one plays the piano as well.
Speaker B:They both play the piano.
They both join in together.
Yeah.
And you know, you can use it to hold on to stuff.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:You can climb ladders with it.
You can, you can communicate with it, you can, you can speak with it.
If you've learned sign language.
It's bloody amazing.
So, yeah, my hand.
Speaker A:Well, thank goodness for the grand designer.
Yeah.
Well, so let's.
After that brief diversion, where do we go with this?
Speaker B:So this question of, like, is the world becoming less or more friendly towards multi tools?
See, I think I have this instinct, I don't have any data, only instinct that whereas before we put a lot of ingenuity into designing tools that were kind of specialized or multifunctional, you know, it was interesting to have to come up with something that solved lots of problems.
I feel like we have in many ways just made the problems standardized.
And I think standardization is such a boring.
It's an effective but really boring strategy to deal with this.
So, yeah, I do feel like, I mean, almost everything now is sort of soluble.
I mean, like, everything's a computer.
Computers speak one language, more or less.
You know, we've kind of converged on a small number of, you know, sort of ways of making a computer work.
The screens are all the same, you know, they're all.
Everything is the same.
Cars have done the same thing, converged on the same kind of thing.
And, you know, all the things you might have to interact with are all standardized components.
You know, standardization and sort of in tools and components has been a massive economic growth generator.
You know that because it Means that you can have a massive supply chain with, you know, 100 things that all fit together and you can have someone, a company that entirely specializes in making one little tiny bit of a, you know, an helicopter blade or something.
And it means, you know.
Well, that's great, but it's boring.
It's just boring.
Speaker C:It means every website looks the same.
Speaker B:Everything.
Everything is gradually converging on kind of being the same.
And I, I don't know, it's just.
I liked it when, you know, when you needed 25 different.
A toolbox with like 25 different things in it.
Gradually you need fewer and fewer things.
And now all you need is, you know, a marlin spike in a mobile phone.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, quite.
And this makes me think of a few things.
First of all is my view of myself and the world, which is often, I think to myself, and I think you'll agree the problem is not me, the problem's the world.
Okay.
And I think that's what we're talking about here.
Okay.
Speaker B:You're a mono tool man in a multi tool world.
Speaker A:Yes, something like that.
Or vice versa.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Which is that you kind of explained how earlier, like how I forgot the phrase that you use.
But you're talking about it right now, which is the world adapts and therefore the world.
The context changes and therefore that reduces.
Speaker B:We make the environment easier to.
Speaker A:Exactly.
It makes it easier.
But it's a trade off.
Right.
Between efficacy.
Right.
And it makes it less friction in doing the stuff you want to do.
But that's great.
But it's a bit utilitarian.
And where's the fun, okay.
Speaker B:Where's the fun in a, in a bloody ship full of shipping containers.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker B: ook at a ship from, you know,:I don't know, is that some kind of Arabica coffee from Mandalay?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, there's all these kinds of container ships.
Speaker C:Has the same.
But you have to use your imagination.
Speaker B:Yeah.
But it, but it clearly is just not as exciting.
Oh, and there has to be a cage with a, with a, with a gorilla in it.
Speaker A:Yes, indeed.
Speaker B:And so it's like that's just clearly more fun than a standardized shipping container world.
Speaker A:Yeah.
So let's say bland, boring, highly functional and ultimately a bit soulless.
Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Totally unrelated.
Therefore.
And coming back to our original point about the Swiss army knife.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Not that we, you know, so I do.
That we want ironic or not.
The demise, or maybe not of the Swiss army knife.
Speaker B: Little did the Swiss know in:They were just, you know, it was a straw in the wind that they had just pushed a little stone off the cliff and it's just become this mighty avalanche of boring standardization.
Yeah, yeah, everything works now.
Yeah, it's a Swiss sort of world, isn't it?
I mean, everything works.
You know, we've got one.
One set of standards for everything.
And it's like, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's a shame because we're going to wrap this up now.
I feel I was all excited and sort of getting into that and, yeah, it's all.
Speaker B:I mean, what are the interesting.
You know, people who used to travel across the Iron Curtain would always have the story of how the train would stop, you know, at the, you know, just outside East Germany.
And then they would spend, you know, half an hour.
People would have to go down the train, changing the.
The gauge, you know, so that it could then fit on Eastern European trains and stuff.
It's kind of cool.
It's fun.
It's a fun idea, you know, that every, every country has different standards and everywhere you go it's a.
It's, you know, you've got weird plugs and weird screws and weird typefaces and.
Yes, we don't have any of that anymore.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Higgledy piggledy ness.
Yeah, love it.
So I think we're gonna stop there.
Right, okay.
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