I read on, interest mounting.
It was a Swiss Army Knife.
I deflated. That? Again?
In fact, not again -- where you might expect to find a toenail clipper, this knife has a two-gigabyte memory stick.
And just to underscore its coolness, the body of the knife is translucent, not the standard-issue red.
At $75.68, this really is quite the impressive gift. (For $34.85, you can get a similar knife, just with 512 megabytes of memory in its USB stick.)
The modernity is fascinating because, as brands go, you can hardly find anything more old school than Victorinox, which manufactures this knife.
A short history: Karl Elsener started the company in 1884. He named it after his mother Victoria; later, he added "inox" to suggest stainless steel. In 1890, he sold his first knife to the Swiss army. American soldiers brought these knives home after World War II; because they had so many uses, the craze began.
Victorinox is now a multi-product company -- luggage, kitchen knives, clothing and watches, all branded with a white cross on a red crest -- but every knife is still made in Switzerland. And the founding family still runs the business. Well into his 80s, Carl Elsener III was still cycling to work, where he was joined in the executive office by Carl Elsener IV.
