As they say for humor, timing is everything. Back in the 1950s, when X-Acto knives first became available, this picture gag would not have made any sense. That's because the new hobby knives were a great advance in safety. Before then, hobbyists had to use single-edge razor blades, which were far more prone to causing accidents. Even more dangerous were homemade knives -- you'd snap a double-edged razor blade in two, then fix half a blade onto some kind of handle. The control and cutting precision of an X-Acto knife with a US-made #11 blade had never existed before -- and has never been surpassed even today.
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