S. Worthen | Weblog

I've never had the pleasure of checking out and reading a library book which had not already had its pages sliced. This one was a brochure of 24 pages printed in 1902. Clearly no one had read it before, as it needed a fair bit of slicing in order to be readable.

I presume the appelation "letter opener" refers to the same thing as a "paper knife". But does it? Are they the same sharpnesses? If so, at what point did the paper knife become so obsolete and specialized as to only be used for opening letters?