as styles evolve, no need to camouflage chunky feet

Above This is strange. It’s a news article from the Boston Sunday Globe, dated July 2, 1939, page 2 (only weeks before the outbreak in Europe of World War II). It’s a discussion of women’s shoe styles in relation to foot size. It claims, in essence, that women are no longer insistent on having small-sized, “dainty” feet. In buying shoes, they are choosing comfort over pain. But then, by means of a curious seque, the author credits this change of attitude to the use of ship camouflage in WWI. Here is the reasoning—

Women have never had an active desire to have dainty feet. Twenty years ago, however, they felt that large feet made them conspicuous; in those days the cartoonists frequently used to jeer at them, call them gunboats and similar names. So dainty feet became the style. Now shoe stores keep sizes 10 and 11 on hand for women who are not ashamed to ask for them.

Shoe manufacturers have contributed more than their bit to this change in point of view. The styles of the last decade have provided for what used to be called gunboats much the same sort of camouflage that the navy paints on battleships in wartime. Color combinations make the large shoe less conspicuous. The sandal type of shoe, with the toe and heel cut out, aimed to make the foot look smaller.

scientists adapt wartime devices for peacetime uses

World War I US Navy camoufleurs

Above This is a wonderfully detailed photograph (digitally colorized) from World War I of members of the US Navy’s Camouflage Section in Washington DC. Headed by Everett Longley Warner, and referred to as the Camouflage Design Subsection, these four men are in process of assembling wooden ship models. When completed, these models were then painted in camouflage patterns, and subsequently tested (in a periscope-equipped observation theatre), to determine their effectiveness in causing German U-boat gunners to make miscalculations in preparing to fire torpedoes.

We were reminded of this photograph when we recently found an article in the New York Sun, dated April 27, 1919, p. 8, as shown below in a restored and rearranged version. It is one of a series of US government photographs that were released to the public for use in news articles, perhaps in 1918 or early 1919. It was reproduced in the top left of what is nearly a full-page article. In the bottom center of the article, I have inserted a much clearer version of the same photograph.

A full-size scan of the original article can be found online, by searching through newspaper archives. The small-scale version posted here is not readable as such, but the topmost headline is: Scientists Hard at Work Turning War Inventions to Peace Uses. It’s a fairly detailed article, and it talks about aspects of camouflage-related research that one rarely sees discussed. During the war, underwater microphones were used by both sides of the conflict as a way of detecting the approach of enemy ships or submarines that were not yet visible. In this article, it is revealed that (now that the war is about to conclude) those same microphones might be used to detect the location and condition of miners who become buried underground when mines collapse.

There is even a brief description of the interior workings of the work area of the Design Subsection, which was located in “the new Navy Building.” The article continues: “At the rear of the office is a door leading into a back room which presents a very unusual appearance. Against the wall appears a collection of miniature ships carefully modeled and painted in curious and bizarre colors. An odd looking instrument is noted which, it later develops, is the periscope of a submarine.” 

detailed account of the process

mouse catcher shaped like harmless paper clip / 1929

Above  RMS Aquitania, showing dazzle camouflage design, in harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia, c1918.

•••

Camouflage for Mice in Earlville Review (Earlville IA) November 28, 1929, p. 9— 

Camouflage, which helped to win the World War, is being employed in Europe to catch mice. On the theory that rodents of today know their traps, inventors have produced, for use In office desks, a mouse-catcher shaped like a harmless paper clip. Another, for general use, resembles an old tin can whose top closes suddenly. Still another resets itself automatically to catch mice all night and dump them into a vat of water.

WWI checkerboard pattern used for object disruption

Above A vintage postcard (we’ve blogged about it before) of a checkerboard-patterned fortress, called Spitbank Fort, built in 1859, near Portsmouth, England. We were inevitably reminded of it when we saw a comparable application of checkerboard camouflage on WWI artillery, shown below.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?

 Nature, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

 Optical science meets visual art

 Disruption versus dazzle

 Chicanery and conspicuousness

 Under the big top at Sims' circus

US ship camouflage as an exact science / 1919 WWI

This article appeared in the Boston Sunday Globe on June 1, 1919, p. 112. It is unsigned, but the information would suggest that the writer had obtained firsthand information from Everett Longley Warner, who was in charge of the Design Subsection of the US Navy's Camouflage Section during World War I. Most articles on the subject then were replete with errors, but this one is an exception to that.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?

 Nature, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

 Optical science meets visual art

 Disruption versus dazzle

 Chicanery and conspicuousness

 Under the big top at Sims' circus

contributions of Hollywood to WWI ground camouflage

Above Camouflage pattern (digitally-colorized, thus historically unreliable) on World War I huge long-range artillery, mounted for railway transport, c1918, unknown source.

•••

G.P. Harleman, News of Los Angeles and Vicinity in The Moving Picture World, December 1, 1917—

Lawson Organizes Camouflage Artists
Lee Lawson, [Hollywood] technical expert, has received from the Adjutant General authorization to form a company of two hundred and fifty men of the [motion picture] studio plants for the camouflage department to be incorporated in the Twenty-Fourth Engineers.

Lawson has been engaged at his trade locally for the past twelve years. He recently asked for authority to organize a company of camouflage artists. His appointment was made by Secretary of War [Newton] Baker.

All the ingenuity of “trick stuff” manifested in motion pictures will be transplanted to the camouflage activities in France. Scene painters, artists, sculptors, property men and numerous other classes of employees in studios will comprise the company.

Lawson already has sixty-four men enrolled. These will leave in a few days for American Lake [near Lakewood], Washington, where they will receive instruction in the most advanced methods of camouflage work.

•••

G.P. Harleman, News of Los Angeles and Vicinity in The Moving Picture World, December 15, 1917, page 1637—

Camouflage Artists Leave for Training
The greatest camouflage company in the world, according to Major George P. Robinson, United States Engineers Corps, left Los Angeles November 24, for an eastern training camp. There wre sixty-five men in the part, headed by Lee Lawson of the Universal. The personnel were recruited almost exclusively from the leading motion picture studios of Los Angeles.

“Nowhere else in the world could a company of men of similar qualifications have been recruited,” said Major Robinson. “The best scenic artists and men of kindred trades in the motion picture industry are here.”

Just before the train pulled out of the station Lee Lawson made a short speech to the crowd. “Friends, we’re going over there to fool the Kaiser, and if Yankee genius counts for anything we’ll be there with the goods,” he said.

The leave taking was different from any farewells given any party of soldiers leaving Los Angeles heretofore. Sixty-five young men, all of them known personally to the five hundred or more persons who bade them goodbye, caused everybody to cry goodbye to everybody else. It was a scene not easily forgotten.

•••

News of Cinema and Film Gossip in The New York Sun, February 2, 1919, p. 39—

Lieutenant Lee Lawson, former technical director, Sergeant Clarence DeWitt and Sergeant H. Divver, formerly of Universal City, for over nine months members of a camouflage regiment in France, has returned to the studio. When America entered the war Lieutenant Lee [sic] assembled scenic artists, sculptors, directors and property men in a camouflage platoon. He was wounded twice, Sergeant DeWitt gassed, and Sergeant Divver wounded twice.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?

 Nature, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

 Optical science meets visual art

 Disruption versus dazzle

 Chicanery and conspicuousness

 Under the big top at Sims' circus