From Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book by Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln (1884): This slicer consists of a long wooden frame which contains a steel cutting blade in the center. When a vegetable is to be cut, the frame end must be braced in some way, e.g., against a wall or place on two chairs with a galvanized tub beneath and a second person bracing the chairs. The vegetable is pushed across the blade and slices fall into a receptacle below. Sometimes slicers allowed the user to adjust the blade to change the thickness of the slice, which might be important when the vegetable being cut is thin potato or cucumber. Often accompanying a slicer such as this one is a wooden block or frame which is used to safely hold smaller vegetables.
