The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to Be as They Are.

by Henry Petroski

  Such a divergence of form has occurred because the way a standard fork, for example, should be modified to function best as, say, a pickle fork is a matter of some judgment. While a pickle fork is intended to convey the slippery food from a serving container to individual plates, the functional effectiveness of the implement can more easily be criticized in a less elegant context. As anyone who has ever tried to get a pickle from a jar can testify, the standard dinner fork does not do the job very effectively. The tough and slippery skin of a pickle resists even the sharpest tines, although, once speared, the pickle seems quite easily dislodged when passing through the jar’s neck. Yet, when a good enough hold is finally gotten on the pickle so that it can be transported to a plate, the fork seems not to want to give up its hold. Should the tines of the perfect pickle fork be shaped to spear and hold the pickle best, or should they be formed to facilitate its release onto the plate? These conflicting objectives, like virtually all the goals of design, demand compromise. Since compromise involves judgment and choice, different designers can be expected to solve the same problem in different ways. In addition, the aesthetic desire to integrate the odd new piece of silverware into a new or an existing pattern can also influence the shape of a fork’s tines. Further complications arise when a silver pattern is to have fewer rather than more pieces, for then decisions must be made as to how to fashion single pieces that are to serve multiple functions.

  This collection of forks shows the variations available in several silver patterns. Top row, left to right: oyster fork-spoon, oyster forks (four styles), berry forks (four styles), terrapin, lettuce and ramekin fork. Middle row: large salad, small salad, child’s, lobster, oyster, oyster-cocktail, fruit, terrapin, lobster, fish, and oyster-cocktail fork. Bottom row: mango, berry, ice-cream, terrapin, lobster, oyster, pastry, salad, fish, pie, dessert, and dinner fork. (photo credit 8.3)

  Given the existence of specialized pieces of silverware, the question of what form is for what function may not be an easy one to answer in all cases. Rather than try to do so, many a writer of books on etiquette (as opposed to those on collecting) has suggested that there are indeed more eating and serving utensils than one should care to know about. Emily Post made the point explicitly in the 1920s:

  One of the fears expressed time and again in letters from readers is that of making a mistake in selecting the right table implements, or in knowing how to use one that is unfamiliar in shape. In the first place queerly shaped pieces of flat silver, contrived for purposes known only to their designers, have no place on a well appointed table. So if you use one of these implements for a purpose not intended, it cannot be a breach of etiquette, since etiquette is founded on tradition, and has no rules concerning eccentricities. In the second place, the choice of an implement is entirely unimportant—a trifling detail which people of high social position care nothing about.…

  The broad statement above, that smart people do not care about which piece of silver to use, has one qualification. They could not use the dinner fork for oysters or a tea spoon for soup, because they instinctively choose an implement suitable for whatever they are about to eat. But whether they happen to choose a medium sized pronged article for fish, that was intended by the manufacturer to be especially helpful for salad or shredded wheat biscuits, makes no difference whatever.

  The form of serving pieces intended for the same purpose could also vary widely from manufacturer to manufacturer, as illustrated here. Top row, left to right: sardine forks (three styles), sardine fork and helper, and jelly knives (five styles). Middle row: tomato servers (three styles) and tomato fork. Lower left: butter knives (four styles). Lower right, top to bottom: cheese servers (two styles), cheese knife, and cheese scoops (four styles). (photo credit 8.4)

  What Emily Post and more recent etiquette writers advise is that a few basic pieces of flat silver are sufficient to set even the best of tables. These essential pieces are: “table spoon, dessert spoon, tea spoon, after dinner coffee spoon, …, large fork—often called a dinner fork, small fork—sometimes called salad or dessert fork, …, large knife—dinner knife with steel blade, small knife—silver blade, …” The ellipses represent specialized spoons, forks, and knives that are included in “the most complete list of flat silver possible in a perfectly equipped home” but that “may be subtracted as unnecessary.” But illuminating the origins of the “unnecessary” pieces, which were once no doubt argued by someone to be “necessary,” provides valuable insights into the evolution of some familiar if puzzling artifacts.

  Much modern silver is very attractive to look at and very comfortable to hold. However, in the course of eating in restaurants and at dinner parties, it is not uncommon to find certain features of a particular place setting that can easily be judged wanting. For example, whereas most dinner forks are generally comfortably large, with four reasonably sharp tines spread over a good width, some forks with obvious pretensions toward modernity have three widely spaced and bluntly shaped tines that are as effective as stumps for eating food. Sometimes, even when a silver pattern’s dinner fork is seemingly perfectly proportioned, other forks in the same set can have rather short and stubby tines that make it difficult to spear and to hold securely a piece of lettuce—or anything else, for that matter. Furthermore, with some forks the small surface of the tines, which converge to a shape more like that of a teaspoon than a fork, can offer very little support area and less of a cradle for the food than we might like. As attractive as such forks might be to look at, I have always felt that their business end is not suited to comfortable eating. In short, they seem to be somewhat of a functional failure as forks, yet households and restaurants become committed to them.

  Sterling silver is generally a one-time investment, and aesthetics seems very often to play a more important role than function in the initial selection and, often, willy-nilly lifetime commitment to the pattern. Silverplate, on the other hand, is not expected to last indefinitely. Around the turn of the century, better silverplate was sold with the understanding that its plating might be good for twenty-five years with proper care, and it was expected that replating would be done as required. On such occasions, the customer could naturally comment, if not complain, about the way a particular piece functioned. Like the maker of Vintage, the responsive manufacturer might realize the advantages of correcting the fault in the next batch made. After all, forks with bent tines could give a whole pattern a bad reputation. But the perfecting of a single piece does not explain the proliferation of specialized pieces.

  Emily Post approved of flat silver in this classic pattern. Left to right: dinner fork, small fork, oyster fork, dinner knife, small knife, butter knife, fruit fork, and fruit knife. In the 1920s, the popular etiquette writer advocated getting by with few specialized pieces. (photo credit 8.5)

  Whether by blind adherence to tradition or by a tacit recognition of functional overrefinement, Emily Post’s Roaring Twenties watchword for choosing silver was conservatism:

  In selecting her silver the bride or householder who would have a perfectly appointed table must be very conservative. Queer pronged spoons, and distorted shapes, whether scooped deep like mussel-shells, or flat-lipped like the petal of a rose, are equally bad.…

  The ultimate of perfection … is silver that was actually made in the eighteenth or at the beginning of the nineteenth century, because the patine [sic] of age is inimitable—to the connoisseur! Happily for most of us, our perceptions are not as keen as the connoisseur’s, and we can be very content with modern reproductions that faithfully copy the best originals.… Choose reproductions rather than new designs.

  But that is not to say that one fork fits all. The large and small dinner forks, for example, evidently coexist because the large fork, so appropriately proportioned for meat, is simply too bold and heavy for more delicate menu items like salad and dessert. The smaller fork, on the other hand, though suited to luncheon dishes, is not substantial and robust enough to be considered ideal for meat. In f
act, the small fork that Emily Post illustrates in a set of flat silver she considers “admirable because beautifully simple” is literally nothing but a smaller version of the dinner fork. About an inch shorter but geometrically similar in every way, it meets her criteria for a good fork: “the corners … are smoothly round, the prongs are slim.” Indeed, according to the arbiter of taste,

  The small fork is the most important fork there is. Its use is for every possible course at breakfast, lunch and dinner except the meat course, for which the large fork is used. The small fork is used literally for everything else, and in such great houses as the Worldlys’ and Gildings’ no other is included in the silver chest.

  Even if thought of as a good investment or simply something one is proud to possess, silverware really constitutes a set of tools for the table. Just as specialized woodworking tools proliferated in response to shortcomings that existing tools exhibited when performing a new task, so the pieces of silverware multiplied in response to the failure of existing pieces of silver to perform food-handling and eating tasks at the table as neatly and efficiently as people expected or hoped was possible. Whether customers complained about the trouble they had eating oysters with existing forks, or whether they complained when bringing in for repairs a fork whose tines were bent, or whether taciturn silversmiths saw at their own dining table room for improvement in the way existing implements worked, with time new and modified pieces of silverware clearly did evolve and proliferate. It is certainly possible to imagine that silver manufacturers looked for new pieces to make so as to tempt consumers to buy more, but it is equally possible to argue that something like the Victorian fascination with gadgets and the elaborate meal drove the process.

  The silverware that Emily Post takes as a paradigm of design was made during the period when the knife, fork, and spoon were becoming commonly accepted as the basic eating utensils of the privileged classes of Western Europe. Afterward, the size of the knife and fork had alternately grown and shrunk as taste and style in food and utensils argued for larger and then smaller utensils. The successive correction of faults in earlier forks, especially with regard to the number and nature of their tines, and the evolving shape of the knife blade with the displacement of some of its earlier functions by the fork, culminated in the most fundamental forms, if not the sizes, of our basic eating utensils. What followed in the nineteenth century and beyond, however, albeit encouraged by the mechanization of craft labor and the development of marketing instincts and networks, was the gradual realization that what at the time were established as the standard knife, fork, and spoon had real shortcomings at the table. In spite of Emily Post’s assertions, it was never easy to eat grapefruit with an ordinary spoon, it was never easy to eat lobster with a large or small fork, and it was never easy to serve asparagus, with any implements. Though it may have been true that the seasoned diner could manage with a few pieces of standard silver, it was also true that those standard pieces failed to function as well as might have been imagined for the increasing variety of dishes that were being brought to the table by technological advances in transportation and refrigeration.

  The basic knife, fork, and spoon could no more do everything equally well at the table than could three basic woodworking tools do everything equally neatly in the woodwright’s shop. It would seem to be inevitable that specialized eating utensils should have been conceived in response to the frustrations of dealing with the likes of squirting grapefruit, stubborn lobster, and drooping asparagus. With specialization would naturally come the multiplication of eating utensils, to the point where purchasing them could be a financial burden, cleaning and storing them could be a logistical burden, and naming and using them correctly could be an educational burden. Who needed or could afford all of those burdens? Eventually, with the moral support of the Emily Posts, ordinary people could still feel fashionable without a piece of silver for every culinary occasion. After all, even in the best of houses one needed only some basic pieces.

  Yet the nineteenth century was indeed one of gadgets, and none the less so at the dining table. According to one account of fantastic inventions of the Victorian era, when middle-class houses were large and complicated enough not only to entertain grandly but also to care for and store all the things that it required, such entertaining was done by the Joneses “always with the primary object of outdoing their neighbours and acquaintances in hospitality.” A formal dinner was frequently the context in which to impress, and one English farmer, “renowned for his generous dining and wining parties,” went to elaborate lengths:

  Having invited his friends to dine with him, he objected to the constant interruptions of his servants. He therefore installed in his rambling mansion a railway which connected the dining room with the kitchen and pantry and carried food and wine. An electrically driven car on miniature rails came right to the table through a service hatch and stopped in front of each guest, who helped himself, after which the host pressed a button and off went the train to the next stop, finally disappearing through another hatch on its way back to the pantry to be loaded with the next course.

  The mechanical service doll was born of much the same inspiration. A small enamelled figure, dressed as a cook, seventeen inches high and holding in each hand a pan or plate containing food, stood in front of the guest, who pressed a button at the figure’s feet and was automatically served.

  Although such radical ways of dealing with the servant problem were probably no gravy train for their inventors, the mere existence of these mechanical artifacts, devised to overcome some undesirable aspect of having a meal served, points to the complicated lengths to which the Victorians were prepared to go to improve the way things worked. And such elaborate solutions were not out of keeping with the elaborateness of the meal itself: “The menu at any such self-respecting dinner would include at least two soups, two fish dishes, four entrées, a couple of roasts, two removes and half a dozen assorted entremets”—i.e., a couple of dishes following the roasts and six different dishes served among the main courses. This would once have seemed quite beyond reason to me, but on a recent visit to England I experienced the vestiges of such extended eating habits. At lunches before I lectured, I was presented with more food in more courses than I am accustomed to eating at all but the most formal of dinners in America. At an ordinary evening dinner in a Cambridge college, I saw more silver than in any American university’s faculty club. And at the annual dinner meeting of the Society of Construction Law, held in the hammer-beamed hall of the Inns of Court in which either the first or the second performance of Twelfth Night took place (depending upon which conversation I eavesdropped upon), so many different glasses were set that they seemed to form a crystal picket fence down the entire length of the very long table. The varying shapes of the glasses had, of course, evolved and multiplied much as pieces of silver had.

  A Victorian dinner-table railway answered the objection of a farmer from the south of England to the constant interruption of servants bringing in a meal’s many courses. An automaton in the form of a small enameled figure dressed as a cook was patented by another Victorian who wished to avoid as much as possible having real servants in the dining room. (photo credit 8.6)

  Lest we think that Victorian America had more restraint at the dinner table than Victorian England, a book on social customs published in Boston in 1887 shows that this was not necessarily the case, although perhaps there was some polite concern over overindulgence:

  Seven and even nine wine-glasses are sometimes put beside each plate, but most of us would not approve of such a profusion of wine as this would imply. At other tables, two extra glasses, one for sherry or Madeira, and the other for claret or Burgundy, are put on with the dessert.…

  After the raw oysters soup is served. At very stylish dinners it is customary to serve two soups,—white and brown, or white and clear.…

  Fish is the next course, and is followed by the entrées, or “those dishes which are served in the first cours
e after the fish.” It is well to serve two entrées at once at a very elaborate dinner, and thus save time. To this succeed the roast, followed by Roman punch [a watery ice containing lemon juice, beaten egg whites, sugar, and rum], and this in turn is followed by game and salad.…

  Cheese is often made a course by itself; indeed, the general tendency of the modern dinner is to have each dish “all alone by itself” … This style, however, may be carried too far. Only one or at most two vegetables are served with one course, and many vegetables make a course by themselves, as asparagus, sweet corn, macaroni, etc.

  Such excess was reserved for large dinners, of course, and the same guide to manners assures us that “for a small dinner it is quite sufficient to have two or three wines.” In the early years of the new century, eating had become considerably streamlined, at least in the mind of the author of The Etiquette of New York To-day:

  Short dinners are the modern fashion. The menu consists, as a general rule, of grapefruit, canapés of caviare, soup, fish, an entrée, a roast with two vegetables, game and salad, dessert and fruit.

  Cheese is sometimes served after the game. If artichokes or asparagus are served they are separate courses.

  Though it may be little wonder that to service such meals a plethora of specialized pieces of silverware evolved in the nineteenth century, wonder does not explain form. Even a plot to sell as many pieces of silver as possible would not in itself explain why the individual pieces looked the way they did. What does explain their form is the failure of the elements of the standard place setting to perform as efficiently as imaginable the great variety of cutting, slicing, piercing, scooping, and other operations that would be required to eat a great variety of foods. Since there were so many courses, it was necessary to set the table initially with a sufficient number of implements, or to bring clean ones with each new course. There were naturally many times during a meal at which used silverware was properly taken away with the used china, and there was clearly a need to keep things moving as smoothly as on a railroad, lest an evening’s dinner last into the next day: