Just for anyone coming to this who, like me, assumed that "IBM Cheese Cutter" was a nickname for some 1970s bit of computer hardware that hung off the side of an S/360.
This is a device for cutting big round "wheels" of cheese. It dates from the 1910s, and would have been used in retail outlets selling cheese. In those days cheese was sold wholesale in big "wheels": round blocks of cheese weighing maybe 70 or 80 lb. (High-end cheese is still sold this way, if you really want to buy that much of it).
A retail customer would ask the counter-clerk for 6 oz of Gorgonzola, and he would pull out one of these big wheels, probably with a segment already cut out for previous customers, and slice off 6 oz.
Problem: how to get exactly 6 oz first time. Customers don't want a couple of little chunks added to make up the weight, and slicing off chunks from what you cut to bring the weight back down is wasteful because nobody wants the scraps. Solution: this machine. It has a lever for setting the original weight of the wheel, and another for the weight the customer wants. A nifty bit of mechanical analogue computer underneath rotates the cheese by exactly the right amount.
I will note that the name is the "(IBM) (computing cheese cutter)", a computing cheese cutter being a device like this, not an "(IBM computing) (cheese cutter)", which is how i originally parsed it.
Cheese is still sold in wheels, or slices off wheels. You just have to go to a cheesemongers, rather than the supermarket aisle :)
In fact, that's how most cheese is made in the first place: in wheels. They can be smaller, like a camembert (about 250 grams), or larger like a gruyere (that's about 40kg) but a cylinder is still the most convenient shape for any cheese harder than a cream cheese. There are some decent quality, usually semi-hard, cheeses made and sold in various kinds of oblongs though. And of course there's processed cheese which usually comes in slices, I guess.
The other day our supermarket broke down half a wheel of Gruyère, wrapped the pieces, and rearranged them back into the original configuration in the display case.
This is a device for cutting big round "wheels" of cheese. It dates from the 1910s, and would have been used in retail outlets selling cheese. In those days cheese was sold wholesale in big "wheels": round blocks of cheese weighing maybe 70 or 80 lb. (High-end cheese is still sold this way, if you really want to buy that much of it).
A retail customer would ask the counter-clerk for 6 oz of Gorgonzola, and he would pull out one of these big wheels, probably with a segment already cut out for previous customers, and slice off 6 oz.
Problem: how to get exactly 6 oz first time. Customers don't want a couple of little chunks added to make up the weight, and slicing off chunks from what you cut to bring the weight back down is wasteful because nobody wants the scraps. Solution: this machine. It has a lever for setting the original weight of the wheel, and another for the weight the customer wants. A nifty bit of mechanical analogue computer underneath rotates the cheese by exactly the right amount.
reply