Sorry I didn't mean to make the room go quiet

It is just a knife I got cheap for a work knife and then saw the distal taper on the tang and the odd wear pattern on the handle. That aroused my curiosity. It made me wonder if it had possibly been part of a hunting sword set. Probably not, from what I can tell those are usually guardless. So, I thought I would ask the group what they thought concerning this knife and its maker. Here is a question someone might know off hand; when did production knives lose the distal taper in the tang?