Body armour fell sharply out of favour in Europe during the 18th century but made a strong resurgence in WWI after folks realised how much getting shot hurt. These are some of the more… eccentric… examples of rudimentary blast shields and flak vests as compiled by our friends at Oobject.com.
If you need to deck out your menagerie in metal plating as well, check out this armour for animals, armour for your mug, and some generally bad-arse armoured accoutrements.
A Splatter Mask won by tank crews.
Armadillo-like Infrantriepanzer body armour 1918.
Brewster Body armour 1917-18.
Franco American Experimental Dunland Helmet.
French soldier wearing a kind of armour as protection against flying bullets.
Helmets with eye protection masks.
Experimental machine gunners helmet.
Shrapnel veil in front of French Adrian helmet.
Steel sniper’s mask.
Troops wearing WWI body armour.
WWI French infantry shield.
WWI Italian troop armour.
Ozoneocean
Saturday, October 1, 2011 at 4:46 PMArmour fell out of favour because of the mobility issue- I think: armour strong enough to actually protect you from bullets or musket balls was too heavy and cumbersome to be practical in an age when horses and walking was the only means of getting around.
With mechanisation, individual armour systems become slightly more practical again… Till weaponry catches up (which it did very quickly).
And today with lighter armour tech we’re back to having armoured troops again.
crowtribe
Saturday, October 1, 2011 at 10:03 PMI think you need to look into common misconceptions of armour.
Specifically, weight and encumbrance, and the obsolescence of armour due to firearms.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm#weight_b
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm#firearms_b
JD
Sunday, October 2, 2011 at 4:48 AMww1 did away with a fair chunk of that mobility requirement thanks to trench warfare, from the distances some battles were fought at body armour such as that shown in the above picture could have been pretty handy providing you could ditch it pretty quickly. but for message runners this would have possibly saved a fair few lives, more so that it would have caused (directly) deaths i think.
attila
Sunday, October 2, 2011 at 3:39 PMThe sniper helmet looks a lot like the Mk1 armour from the first Iron Man film.
luigi
Monday, October 3, 2011 at 6:34 PMI’m sure Ironman’s writer did abit of research….