The "Wave", an obscure feature that adorns many knives in the Emerson lineup, is itself accompanied by quite the story. For those who may not know, the Wave feature is intended to allow the user to open a knife in the fastest, smoothest, safest way possible. This affords the user ample time to engage in self-defense or an emergency without the delay of manually opening the knife.
The wave was developed while I was working with a group within the SEAL teams and it had to do with their fighting course curriculum. At the time, they were developing tactics and fighting weapons when they approached me, "We'd like to have a knife that would have something on top of the blade that would act as a stop or catch to prevent something from sliding over the top of the blade and contacting the operator's hands." So, I developed a knife that had a hook-like feature on top which looked reminiscent of a wave, and because we were living in southern California and going surfing and all that I said: "Well, we'll just call it the Wave," and the name stuck.
It was really designed to catch something, like another knife blade or an edge coming across the top of the knife when in a clash with someone who also had a weapon. Well, when they came up to my shop to pick up the prototypes they said, "Wow, that's great. We think that will work just fine." Coronado is about 90 miles away, around an hour and a half or so. We finished up our business and they took a couple of the prototypes with them and I kept a couple. It was funny because I put the knife in my pocket and started to pull it out and I noticed that blade partially opened up when I was trying to drag it out of my pocket. I thought, "Wow, that's interesting." So, I pulled it out again, then again, and again with a little more oomph behind it and WHAM. It opened the blade completely.
So, there I was sitting in my shop putting that knife in and out of my pocket, opening it instantaneously as it was withdrawn. I was thinking, "Damn, that blade opens up automatically." Lo and behold, my phone rang. It's the guys who were just at my shop. By now they had gotten back down to Coronado and they're saying, "Emerson, do you know what this knife does when it comes out of your pocket? It automatically deploys. It opens automatically." I was like "Yeah, I know. I just discovered that myself."
As I guess it is with a lot of great ideas, they are byproducts or are discovered by accident and sometimes good ideas just happen to fall into place. We went on to patent the wave feature and it became a standard requirement on all military contracts that we got and most law enforcement contracts that we filled.
