Victorinox 91mm

In 1897, six years after he first started manufacturing the Soldier's Knife, Karl Elsener brought out his Officer's Knife. This model introduced the legendary corkscrew; some consider to be the defining tool of a Swiss Army Knife, and the secondary blade; in a new frame size - 91mm. This model was the ancestor and equivalent of today's Spartan, and spawned a whole family of models. The 91mm models offer the most variety in tool configurations, and have been used in industries from farming to space exploration.

These Officer's knives, however, have never been issued to army officers or been part of a military contract, although they were designed to be attractive to an officer with its corkscrew! An officer would purchase a knife with his own money. Strangely, however, the Officer's Knives became the quintessential  Swiss Army Knives for the public at large; once they spread beyond the military.

The Victorinox models originally just had numbers as identifiers, such as 246fmaU  (- an early 'Champion'). Descriptive names such as those in the list below, were introduced at least from the 1950s, although they were not standardised across all markets and dealers. A full cutover to the descriptive names and a new model numbering convention took place in the mid-seventies.

As can be seen from the list below: Many, many 91mm models have been produced - Most are no longer available - see note under Models.
This document reviews the current (2019) 91mm range and can be downloaded.
The external references section below has links to 91mm identification and evolution documents.

Model and Toolset Evolution: As the years progressed, the individual Victorinox tools evolved - for exmple see the pliers and scissors pages. However, occasionally the toolset in a model changed, this was particularly true of the back-tools. The most significant change here being the introduction of the hook in 1991. However sometimes, even a main toolset changed, for instance, see the Champion and Handyman pages. For the current tool to model configurations - Check the layer tables and the individual model pages (see right and below), and/or the Family Trees and Model Images section below.