HUNGERFORD ARCADE & THE THREE BLADED KNIFE!

A customer, Dr. Colin Harris, runs a club for collectors of curious items!  One such item was a three bladed table knife which he had recently purchased and found that neither he nor his fellow curio collectors had ever seen anything like it before and had no idea what it could be used for!  Dr. Harris e-mailed Hungerford Arcade with pictures of the knife and asked if anyone here would know anything about it!  Well, we have Barbro Rees at the Arcade and fortunately, she specialises in cutlery!  

This is Barbro's reply to Dr. Harris!
Rita

"I've never seen a three parallel bladed knife but
I find there are several patents about them e.g.

www.google.com/patents/US5680705

www.google.com/patents/EP0680809A1?cl=en

The latter patent includes the following paragraph:"

'The knife, according to the invention, comprises a
handle which is joined with multiple parallel blades
so that the number of cutting operations for slicing
a food product is reduced as every cutting operation
gives several slices at the same time. In a preferred
embodiment the invention relates to a multiple-blade
knife for cutting food products into slices, wherein
the multiple blades are arranged in parallel and joined
to a handle, and wherein the handle has means for
setting and adjusting the distance between the blades
and wherein there are means for a temporary removal
of the parallel blades in order to free the knife blades
from the food product after the cutting'.

Barbro