The cheese-slicer is a Norwegian invention. On a hot summer day in 1927 Thor Bjørklund had his lunch break in his carpenter-workshop at Lillehammer. As usual, he was curious about the lunch his wife had prepared for him. He was very excited when he discovered the four slices of bread with "gouda-cheese". However, the high temperature caused his cheese to melt that made the cheese look uninviting. He tried to divide the slices of cheese so that he didn´t have to eat so much of it. At first he tried the knife... that didn't work... then he tried the saw.

That didn't work either. After that he found his plane that he had been using recently to slice some wood. And it worked perfectly well. But it was a bit difficult to use. And you couldn´t store it in the kitchen. Therefore he decided to make it smaller. After thinking about this over night, he found a thin slice of steel. He cut it and bent it down, while the back of the steel-slice was bent up. Then you could have a nice slice of cheese go through. Neighbors and friends loved his invention, so he had to make one for them too. After a while he realized that he should take out a patent for his product, later this year he got it (by the way, the patent-number is 43377).

(text provided by the Norwegian patent office)

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