The Invention of the Fork
The fork is one of the most common objects in the Western world, yet it took roughly a thousand years to catch on. For most of European history, people ate with their hands, a knife, and occasionally a spoon. The fork was available—it just wasn't wanted.
Two-pronged forks existed in ancient Egypt and Greece, but they were used for cooking, not eating. The table fork appears to have originated in the Byzantine Empire around the 4th century. A Byzantine princess named Theophanu reportedly brought golden forks with her when she married the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II in 972 AD. The Venetian clergy denounced her table utensils as an affront to God—food was a divine gift, and using a metal instrument to eat it implied that human fingers weren't good enough. When Theophanu died of plague two years later, some clergymen considered it divine punishment.
The fork made its way to Italy through Venice's trade connections with Byzantium, but even in Italy it spread slowly. When a wealthy Italian woman named Maria Argyropoulina used a fork at her wedding feast in Venice in 1004, the local priest Peter Damian wrote that her "excessive delicacy" proved the decadence of the East. She also died shortly afterward, which the clergy again attributed to God's displeasure.
By the 16th century, forks had become common in Italian aristocratic circles. When Catherine de' Medici married Henry II of France in 1533, she brought forks to the French court. The French thought they were ridiculous. When Thomas Coryate, an English traveler, brought the fork back to England from Italy in 1608, he was mocked and given the nickname "furcifer"—a Latin pun meaning both "fork-bearer" and "rascal."
England didn't widely adopt the fork until the 18th century. The American colonies were even later—travelers noted that most Americans ate with knives and fingers well into the 1800s.
The four-tined fork, now standard, didn't become common until the early 19th century. Earlier forks had two or three tines and were surprisingly difficult to eat with. The extra tine made the difference.