Upon entering the Museum, the first thing that the visitor finds is a brief historical tour that helps to know the history of the knife making sector in Albacete. Albacete is a city of Muslim origin. Etymologically "Al-Basit" means "flat land" or "plain". Briefly, we can point -in chronological order- how the knife making emerged in our city:
13th Century.- Albacete is conquered by the Christians but relies upon Chinchilla de Montearagón.
14th Century.- There is a resurgence of the city and this fact leads to the independence from Chinchilla.
15th Century.-Albacete becomes an important villa. There are documents of the existence of guilds of carpenters, weavers, blacksmiths, sword makers and knife makers. According to these documents, the first knife maker was Alonso Fernández.
16th Century.-The villa, in full expansion, is one of the most prosperous and modern villas in the area. There were several trade names such as Diego Torres, which was a knife maker, and Nicolás Arias, which was a sword maker.
17th Century.-The widespread use of knives and their demand increase, as happens with swords, handguns and desktop scissors.
18th Century.- It is the golden age of the Albacete knife making trade. Great craft masters appear and Albacete becomes one of the most important European centers of this sector.
19th Century.- The arrival of the railroad favours the marketing, due to the easier and cheaper transport of raw materials and finished products. The figure of the seller with his belt full of pocket knives appears at the railway station. The knife making trade of Albacete is introduced throughout Spain and in various parts of Europe.
20th Century.- The pocket knife becomes a tool and its typology is diversified. During the last quarter of the century, almost all the one-person and family workshops were closed because the owners were unable to compete with the mechanized industries, located mostly in the industrial area called Polígono Industrial Campollano.
21st Century.- The knife making sector faces new challenges like the globalization of the market and the increase of competition. The advance of new technologies imposes the need to invest in innovation, quality and dissemination through means such as the Internet.