X-Acto is a brand name for a variety of cutting tools and office products owned by Newell Brands These include hobby and utility knives, saws, carving tools and many small-scale precision knives used for crafts and other applications. An X-Acto knife may be called an Exacto knife, utility knife, precision knife, or hobby knife.
History
The original knife was invented in the 1930s by Sundel Doniger, a Jewish Polish immigrant to the United States. He started a medical supply company in 1917 producing medical syringes and scalpels with removable blades.[1] This would later be his inspiration for the X-Acto brand of knives.[2][3] He had planned to sell it to surgeons as a scalpel but it was not acceptable, because it could not be cleaned. His brother-in-law, Daniel Glück (father of poet and 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Louise Glück), suggested that it might be a good craft tool.
In 1930, a house designer asked Doniger if he could create something for him that would help him crop some advertisements.