Armor Steampunk Style – a short history of body armor from the Victorian Era to the middle 20th century

An iron heart and a steel breastplate – garrotters, dacoits, and lascars, beware!

As the renaissance ended, so did the importance of personal body armor, due to improving gun technology.  By the beginning of the Victorian Era (1837-1901), very few military personnel even wore a breastplate and metal helmet, other than combat engineers (sappers and miners) and heavy cavalry (cuirassiers).  Generally, the only metal vestige of armor was the officer’s gorget and even that was fading fast from military panoply

The American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War opened a new era of quick military movements where offense out weighed defense and outmoded Napoleonic Era zone control tactics.  This is also the period that began a renewed interest in personal protection that was light weight and portable.

By the Civil War American inventors came up with several “bullet proof” shirts or vests, none of which were very effective or light.  Generally they were a scam put upon gullible soldiers and those who did buy this armor were derided by the others.  Original account of a Civil War bullet proof vest The image to the right is an advertisement from March 22 1862, page 192, Issue of Harper's Weekly Magazine for a bullet proof vest.  Buyer beware.

 For the ultimate, real steampunk armor you have to go Down Under to Australia and check out the Ned Kelly Gang in the 1870s to 1880.  Their massive steel armor shirts and helmets would indeed turn bullets, but they were terribly heavy and the loss of mobility and poor peripheral vision in the viewing slits made these sets of armor very limited indeed.  They were so heavy the gang decided against leg armor as being way too cumbersome and so it was to prove their undoing.  The full story is on the Wikipedia link provided on their name.  More recently, Clint Eastwood emulated the Kelly gang in A Fist Full of Dollars (1964) in this rewrite of Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel, Red Harvest and Kurosawa’s later 1961 movie, Yojimo.  So much for movie trivia.

The only successful set of body ballistic armor was made much like ancient Chinese armor, formed from many layers of silk.  Ukrainian born Casimir Zeglen was an unlikely armor maker as he was a Catholic Priest living in Chicago; who made the first commercially feasible bullet proof vest in 1897. Zeglen's vests were made of silk fabric.  Silk, like spider web material is incredibly strong for it size and has a high tensile strength, which made it perfect for strong, tightly woven ballistic cloth.  Zeglen’s vest was offered for sale at the astounding cost of $800 US dollars, well out of the range of all but the wealthiest.  He went on to produce sheets of the cloth, which could be made into a curtain to armor the passenger section of a vehicle.

 

Of interest, Archduke Franz Ferdinand did wear a bullet proof vest on the day that his touring car received a bomb attack while in Sarajevo.  He survived the bomb but was shot in the neck later in the day; so began WWI.  His vest didn’t cover the throat.  Take note.

Different inventors played around with armor schemes, but nobody was buying until the outbreak of WWI.  The first piece of medieval armor to be reintroduced was the steel helmet.  But they were not brought back to stop bullets, which they didn’t, but the dangerous steel splinters of shrapnel from the hellish artillery.  The Germans and the Allies both introduced helmets and toyed with facemasks to stop shrapnel, but they were impractical and set aside.  The only vestige of the facemask experiment is the “Frankenstein” facemask mounting lugs seen on German and Austrian WWI helmets.

The U.S. Model 8A experimental helmet is another example of a throwback to medieval sources of a visored sallet.  It face is protected by a raiseable ballistic visor with eye slits.  The prototypes were produced in 1918 by the Ford Motor Company for trials but only 1,300 were made.  The interior was a standard Brody style suspension system.  Even more sallet- like were the earlier 1917 ridged M2 and M5A, experimental helmets, both without a visor. 

Body armor was also reintroduced in limited quantities by belligerents and experiments were rampant and often ludicrous.  The Germans had a massive set of armor made for machine gunners, since they didn’t move from their emplacements, but were constantly snipped at.  A super heavy breastplate could and did turn rifle bullets, but at the expense of movement.  Sniping got so bad that the Germany also had brow armor for the forehead and was held in place with those vestigial helmet lugs.  Finally, those lugs had a use.

Body armor was pretty much shelved after WWI, until the Soviets produced light steel breastplates for their combat engineers, shock troops and tank riders in WWII.  They wouldn’t stop a rifle bullet and might stop a 9mm SMG or pistol bullet at medium range … at least until the Germans improved their 9mm cartridges in 1943 and that was the end of that.

Our modern ballistic vests use space age concoctions of ceramics, graphite, and good old steel these days.  For now, body armor is back until new improvements in ballistics returns the knightly vestiges back to the museum.

 

Here are a few images of contemporary Steampunk outfits.  You can recycle an old medieval costume breastplate or make one fresh with foam sheets or fashion one out soft sheet aluminum or even go with the ever-popular chainmail look, with a few enhancements.  I hope to see a few sets of steampunk armor at CoastCon or Mobicon next year.  They would be good for a Call of Cthulhu RPG or LARP set in the 1880s!

                                                                                                 CoastConFan
------------------UPDATE 23 OCT, 2012----------------

After I posted this blog entry, I turned up this excellent steampunk armored corset from organicarmor.com and it was so different, I just had to add this piece to the blog.  I suggest a visit to their site if you like interesting armor.

-------------------Update 17 Jan 2013---------------------------

I finally found an image I have seeking for the WWI US Army experimental helmet for snipers and machine gunners which completely covers the head in a very medieval sort of way.  It might have been pretty good for shrapnel, but vision and hearing was highly impaired and it just wouldn't stop a rifle bullet.  Additional update:  As of May 2014, I inserted more information into the body of the text and some links to the helmet.

U.S. Experimental Model 8A, 1918

Update June 2016   --------------------------------------

If this article was of interest to you, I highly recommend you download a copy of Helmets and Body Armor in Modern Warfare, pub 1920 by Bashford Dean PhD, who was the curator of armor at the Met, printed by Yale University Press.  The book has a nice overview of the history of armor of earlier times leading up to WWI.  It shows a lot of very interesting experimental helmets I hadn’t encountered before, especially some of the visors that were attached to helmets.  The book also discusses a range of body armor along with ballistic cloth, much of which varies from medieval to the very modern in look.  Download for free from the Met at their website

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/helmets_and_body_armor_in_modern_warfare

It's lso available from the Internet Achive  https://archive.org/details/helmetsbodyarmor00deanuoft  and from another source  www.muraditutti.it/biblioteca-militare-virgilio-ilari/ancient-military-history/ancient-armor-and-weapons/1920_DEAN_Helmets-and-Body-Armor-in-Modern-Warfare

UPDATE: I have a new hat/helmet post 2 May 2017-- Mr. Pratt’s Gun Hat or How to Be Fashionable But Deadly in the Trenches   http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2017/05/mr-pratts-gun-hat-or-how-to-be.html

 

Links of Interest

Here are a few additional links about Ned Kelly:

This is a great article about restoring and installing Ned Kelly’s armor in an Australian Museum http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/irish_in_australia/behind_the_scenes/kelly_gang_armour_installation

http://www.ironoutlaw.com/html/armour.html

 

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/09/02/dna-evidence-identifies-famous-armored-australian-outlaw/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/ned-kellys-missing-skull-discovered-in-the-cupboard-of-a-witch-in-new-zealand-8084276.html

FIRSTS IN SPACE – Sally Ride, Soviet Cosmonauts, Fruit Flies, Monkeys, and NAZI V-2 Rockets

Sally Ride, the first American woman in space died recently and that set me to thinking.  If Sally Ride was the first American woman in space, who was the first woman in space?  

From the back of my mind came the face of a Soviet cosmonaut from the early 1960s.  With a little Googling around, I came up with the forgotten name to go with that face:  Valentina Tereshkova, who flew for the now-defunct U.S.S.R space program back on 16 June 1963, making her the first woman in space.  But due to Cold War politics, she faded from America’s memory.  Ms Ride flew on the space shuttle Challenger,18 June 1983, 20 years after Tereshkova flew in space. 

Despite being the third woman in space, Sally Ride is The Woman of Space to many Americans.  The real poke in the eye for astronaut women was the fact that Geraldine Cobb was the first U.S. woman to undergo astronaut testing, but the program was scrapped in 1961.  Who knows, Ms Cobb might have had the honor of being the first woman in space had things gone differently.  As an aside, Svetlanta Savitskaya was the first woman to walk in space on 17 June 1984, with a walk that lasted over three hours.

So this mania of space firsts led me to wonder as to what was the first animal in space from those primitive launches of V-2s, to Sputnik, to recent history, and I have the answers here:

- First chimp in space was Ham who flew on a U.S. Project Mercury rocket on 31 January 1961.

- First dog in space was Laika, who flew for the Soviet Union on 3 November 1957.

- First monkey in space was Albert, a rhesus monkey who flew on a captured V-2 rocket on 11 June 1948, launched by the USA.

- First insects in space – fruit flies launched in U.S. V-2 rocket 1947.  Earlier 1946 flights did not fly high enough to enter space, only ascending 38 miles.  See below.#

- First plant in space – corn launched in the same U.S. V-2 rocket that carried the fruit flies in 1947.

- Despite the Muppet Show, there never were any Pigs In Space, sorry Ms. Piggy

I’ve got to wonder, who will the first child in space be?  This comes from an old Lost In Space Fan, both the comic book and the TV show.  It’s kind of funny that monkeys, chimps, dogs, fruit flies, and even corn beat human beings into space.  Think about that next time you have corn for dinner or bat at a pesky fly!

Ham, the first chimp in space is buried at the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, just an early missile’s shot from where Robert Goddard, inspired by H. G. Wells* and early science fiction, tested his primitive rockets and where the U.S. tested and launched captured NAZI V-2 rockets on White Sands in the late 1940s.  

Sally Ride is gone and so is the chance to meet her, but Valentinia Tereshkova is still alive and it would be really nice if some large SF convention with a good budget could get her to attend as Astronaut Guest of Honor.  I’d really like to meet her.  I’m sorry I never got to meet Sally Ride.

It’s a shame the space race during the Cold War was such a politicized affair of us versus them although that drove the U.S. into space.   It’s also a shame that Sally Ride is being made into a political statement after her death.  She flew as a human being, a woman, and an American, listed in no particular order.  She is survived her ex-husband, astronaut Steve Hawley (1982-1987) and by Tam O’Shaughnessey, her partner of the past 27 years, and by millions of aspiring astronauts that looked up to Sally Ride … as a person.

                                                                      CoastConFan

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*H. G. Wells died 13 August 1946, I don’t know if he was aware of the 1946 White Sands rocket tests or his impact on Goddard, but I’d like to think he did.

#Note:  The boundary of space is not always defined uniformly by different agencies at different times.  Such as the Karman Line 100km (62 miles) used by the Federation Aeronautic International, NASA mission control using 122 km (76) miles as re-entry altitude, and the U.S.A uses the definition of 50 miles  (80km) as space in determining who is an astronaut.  These boundaries become important when applying U.N. Space Law.

     Links:

A list of women in space http://www.aerospaceguide.net/women_in_space/index.html

An article about animals in space http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_in_space

Timeline of Rockets http://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/Rocket_Timeline_5.htm

An article about outer space in general http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_space

An article about weightlessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weightlessness

KEN GRIMES Has Left The Convention

On 18 July 2012 fandom lost another true fan. Dr. Kennard Allen Grimes, better known as Ken Grimes.  Ken was a well-known feature of CoastCons and in fact was an attendee of the first CoastCon, way back in 1978.  He attended while Ken was working on a degree in microbiology at USM in Hattiesburg.   Later he made it a point to travel down from Tennessee, where he made his home to attend CoastCons.

For years, he was CoastCon’s official photographer and keeper of the archive, taking photos and keeping a record of CoastCon’s activities.  Every year he traveled from Tennessee with the archive to exhibit to exhibit its arcane contents to wondering fans. He was honored as CoastCon 35’s Fan Guest of Honor this past year, for his years of support and work.

Less known about the fan Ken Grimes was the fact that he held a Ph.D. in microbiology, so he was not only a fan of SF, but was part of the cutting edge of scientific discovery.  He also played the banjo, loved bluegrass music and SF, scale models, and was a big attendee of conventions, such as CoastCon, Dragon Con and several World Cons over the years.

Ken was always there with his camera and archive and became a permanent fixture of CoastCon.  He died suddenly and his memorial service was held at Mount Olive Cemetery Funeral Home.  We will miss your quiet fannishness, Ken, our ranks are a little thinner with your passing.  I wish I had chatted with you’re a little longer, but I didn’t know this was your last attendance.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/tennessean/obituary.aspx?n=kennard-allen-grimes&pid=158640827&fhid=4485#fbLoggedOut

I would like to put out a request to the present sitting committee of CoastCon, Inc. to name the archive in honor of Ken Grimes.  I think it’s a fitting reminder of the perennial fan and supporter of CoastCon.

                                                                                                      CoastConFan

http://www.coastcon.org/index.php/guests-a-groups

FEDORA – the hat of intrigue and danger

You might be surprised about the origin of the fedora hat as well as the hipster icon hat, the trilby.

The fedora is a hat that has remained popular off an on for about a century in all its incarnations.  But did you know that this venerable hat, so associated with 1930s adventure, P.I.s., film noir, and glamour was born from a play?  Victorien Sardu wrote a play for the Victorian superstar Sarah Bernhardt in 1882, called Fedora, which was also the name of the main character.  Sarah Bernhardt wore a hat while playing Fedora on stage and due to this, the hat became very popular and was referred to as a fedora.

Actually, the term fedora covers a variety of hat styles such as the homburg, trilby, and a variety of other hats that have no specific name but similar in style.  The hat may have grown from the mid-Victorian slouch hat, which was popular in the American Civil War.  The slouch hat was rather shapeless but could be formed by the owner.  They were considered an informal hat worn by workers.  But somehow this shapeless hat of the proletariat became stylish and the hat we know and love as the fedora.

 

Fedoras are one of those hats that are evocative of the 20^th century and well ensconced in literature and film of the period.  The aura of danger comes from the association with gangsters, real and fictional and the later film noir genre.  The most famous 20^th century film characters wearing fedoras are Indiana Jones and Humphrey Bogart’s many tough guy roles such as Sam Spade, Duke Mantee, and as the bedraggled American adventurer/prospector Dobbs in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  Good guys wore fedoras like Indy and Dick Tracy, but bad guys did too, like Al Capone and other gangsters.  The fedora didn’t make you good or bad, but by your deeds you were known and unlike film westerns, the color of your had didn’t predict your character’s actions.

The trilby hat also has literary and Victorian roots.  It comes from the book Trilby by George du Maurier published in 1894 and was a runaway best seller.  On a side-note, Bram Stoker may have used the hypnotism hook by of the evil mesmerist, Svengali in Trilby, when he wrote Dracula (1897), which was also a best seller.  Trilbies can be made of many different materials from hand woven wool, to snappy straw, now so trendy among hipsters.  The trilby also has associations with the Tyrolean hat, so popular in southern Germany and Austria. 

 

Vintage fedoras and trilbies can get quite pricy although you can get lucky sometimes and get one for a good price.  There are a number of hat makers who still make fedoras such as the classic Stetson, and the internet is full of fedoras for sale.  Always try to get the best possible quality and condition, because a good hat can last you a lifetime. 

If you find one you like but want to tweak the shape, you can reshape and reform a hat into a fedora form by using steam, but be careful not to get burned.  I have reshaped a number of hats to a more likeable form using the teakettle steam technique.  It allows you to direct the steam and work the area without wilting the whole hat.

 

For costuming, a fedora can make a very simple costume pop and a homburg can make a three piece suit look like a high roller.  Make sure you store your hats in a clean, dry area in your house and not in an attic, garage or basement.  Any box can make a hatbox if you don’t have an original one available.  Don’t seal up you hat in a plastic container because of the danger of mold due to condensation inside the box.  Let the hat breath a little and add a mothball or better yet, cedar chips which will keep the insects away from the delicious felt.  Believe it or not, moths are less of a hazard than crickets, who seem to just munch away wildly.  This is true of all felt and wool items, so keep your costumes and gear safe.  A fedora makes a good item for Steampunk, a Call of Cthulhu game or any RPG, as a clue or a prop.

LINKS

As a companion post, see my post:   A Brief History of Trench Coats

For more adventurer hats, see also:   Pith Helmets, Sun Helmets, and Sola Topees
Slouch hats, more adventurer hats, added 28 April 2013:  Slouch Hats, Bush Hats, Big Game Hunters, andExplorers

The play Fedora  was written for Sarah Bernhardt by Victorien Sardu  is available for free download from Google Books by clicking on the link.

The book Trilby by George du Maurier is available for free download from Project Gutenberg by clicking on the link.

The book Dracula by Bram Stoker is available for free download from Project Gutenberg by clicking on the link.

This was my 100^th post since starting the CoastConFan Blog.  I really appreciate the support and interest in this obscure niche blog.  I also appreciate the many bloggers who are so sharing of information and images in their blogs and posts.  I hope to continue blogging for years to come.  Thanks!                 CoastConFan

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UPDATE:  a reader sent in this amusing photo that he thought pretty much summed up the state of hat wearing today.  I must admit I used to wear a vintage (1930s) fedora but had to stop because of the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie that came out in 1981.  I sure hope I didn't look quite that badly.

------------------------------------------------

UPDATE 2:  I just found a scan of that photo mentioned in  the first update --


I'm the guy on the left.

TINTIN COVERS 4 – Politics, Parody, Pastiches, and Irony

Tintin is an international icon, which in this post-modern world, seems to make him a target and vector for politics and messages.  Needless to say, none of these works are canon and Hergé would probably object to their messages.   In fact, I haven’t included a number of existing fan covers due to them being highly objectionable. I can't always agree with everybody, but I think that everybody has a right to be heard. 

Ironically enough, some of the original Tintin books have been under attack by various groups with “modern” agendas.  You can find those debates on line easily enough, if that's your cup of tea.  Hergé was born in 1907 and was brought up in the milieu (not Milou) of his era.  The first Tintin story appeared in print in 1929, over 80 years ago, although he had other works previous to that time.  Undoubtedly, his works will be continue to be studied, discussed, copied, and satirized for years to come.

I can’t say I agree with the message of these unauthorized covers and works, but I have included some of them here to show what a powerful iconic image Tintin is, within not only our culture, but in many cultures.  Tintin is printed in 98 languages and dialects, which gives Tintin global impact.  But I’m no Tintin scholar, just a long-time fan.

I haven’t made this an exhaustive list of ersatz Tintin covers, because I believe that Hergé intended for Tintin to be a young adult’s book and there are a number of subjects that he did not cover.  I won’t either because this is a family friendly, safe-for-work blog.

I have posted previously about my father reading Tintin books to me while I was a very small child and how important reading to children is to their development.  Children model themselves on their parent(s), peer group, and their society.  Set a good example and make them not just literate, but love reading and writing.  Kids these days need to be armed with literacy and have informed, critical thinking.  I’d like to think that the Tintin books had a hand in that, in my case.

                                                                                                                  CoastConFan

 TINTIN COVERS 1 – The Reality

TINTIN COVERS 2 – The Lovecraft Connection

TINTIN COVERS 3 – Weird Science

TINTIN COVERS 4 – Politics, Parody, Pastiches, and Irony

TINTIN COVERS 5 -  Great Snakes! - More Tintin Covers

Update 2014

This last one strikes dangerously close to home!

TINTIN COVERS 3 – Weird Science

 

This is the third of a series of four posts about the fannish Tintin phenomena and the predilection of artistic fans to put their own spin on the famous Hergé series.

In the last Tintin post, The Lovecraft Connection, I showed a few fan-made Lovecraft-Tintin mashups, which placed Tintin in contact with Cthulhu mythos creatures and situations.  In this post I want to show a few clever science fiction covers produced by fans.

We know that Hergé had an interest in science fiction with the publication of The Shooting Star and the two-part lunar story, Destination Moon & Explorers on the Moon.

See if you can guess what famous books and movies these covers are referring to:  some are obvious, and a couple are more esoteric, but all are made with respect to Tintin and the works of Hergé.

The Magneto Affair not an overtly Tintin mashup cover, but the style is unmistakable.

TINTIN COVERS 1 – The Reality

TINTIN COVERS 2 – The Lovecraft Connection

TINTIN COVERS 3 – Weird Science

TINTIN COVERS 4 - Politics, Parody, Pastiches, and Irony

TINTIN COVERS 5 -  Great Snakes! - More Tintin Covers

 

UPDATE 2014:  A few more weird science covers

 

                                                                                          CoastConFan