As an epilogue, I found these delightful Julia Child references and had to share. It's endless fun to burrow through the wormholes in the Internet! Hope you enjoy them.

"Julia Child had a pet peeve: kitchen knives. They were never sharp enough."
http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/70-cent-knife-brought-julia-child-cambridge-mass/

Julia Child, The French Chef- Your Own French Onion Soup ... with a lesson on her own knife preferences and (unique) steeling technique*:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw0Ij1Fxgq4&feature=youtu.be&t=164

*In my carboniferous collection there are a couple of antique steels, and man they are hard -- their Rockwell hardness is higher than anything I've ever seen in "modern" steels. And they have a super-fine groove pattern, so they are as much a micro-abrasive as a realignment tool. They will keep most any knife zipping through onions, even if the "coarse" edge causes the electron-microscope-ites to cast aspersions. I'll stop now; I think we've reached peak nerd on this thread.