camouflage applied to NYC police boats during WWI

Above An odd discovery. In an issue of the Spokesman Review (Spokane WA) on November 4, 1917, this photograph (poor quality vintage halftone) appeared with the caption CRAFT OF HARBOR GUARDS DISGUISED: Camouflaged Police Boat.

It shows an NYC municipal police boat that has presumably been camouflaged using a method first proposed by muralist and interior designer William Andrew Mackay. I’ve written about Mackay extensively in an online essay titled “Optical Science Meets Visual Art: The Camouflage Experiments of William Andrew Mackay.” This early method is also detailed in a patent application, submitted on September 4, 1917, as US Patent No. 1,305,296, “Process of Rendering Objects Less Visible Against Background.”

The text of the original news article reads as follows—

All New York City police boats are now being painted with a blue and green motif, which, when any distance away, causes the boats to appear to merge into the dark waters of the bay and river. It is said that at night is is almost impossible to distinguish the outline of the craft which guards the waters and keeps its eye on docks and shipping.

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

Boston police find gun camouflaged as a pocket knife

Above Photograph from a news article titled PISTOL CAMOUFLAGED AS A KNIFE WHICH WAS DISCOVERED BY THE BOSTON POLICE in the Albuquerque Morning Journal (January 5, 1920, p. 2). The caption reads—

A weapon cunningly contrived to suit the criminal’s purposes was discovered recently by the Boston police. It is a pistol camouflaged as a pocket knife. The knife is about four inches long with a blade half an inch shorter. On the underside is a chamber which holds a 22 calibre cartridge. This is pushed back into the knife handle after loading. A spring activated lever is in the top of the knife. To fire the pistol this lever is pulled out. On snapping back it fires the cartridge.

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

a primer for the wee ones on the value of camouflage

Sarah L. Raymo, Camouflaged Teddy Bear Patent

MILTON HAVEN CUB NOTES in Haverfordwest and Milford Haven Telegraph (Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, Wales), July 9, 1919—

A TALK ABOUT "CAMOUFLAGE."
I suppose a good number of you Cubs have heard the word "Camouflage"? These big words puzzle some of the older folk sometimes, and when they see a word which they do not understand, they go and look for a book called a "dictionary" which explains the meaning.

DECEIVING THE ENEMY.
When the word "camouflage" was first brought to the public notice, people wondered what it meant.

We people who live near the coast soon found out what " camouflage" meant. At first we saw most peculiar painted ships, and as you looked at them, you could imagine they represented all kinds of wild animals. To look at them in the distance, they did not look like ships, and really it was puzzling, and when we turned to our neighbor and said, " look at that funny ship," they said she is " camouflaged."

Now I wonder if you Cubs understand why those ships were painted in this way? Why was the ship "camouflaged"?

It was to deceive the enemy.

NATURE'S CAMOUFLAGE.
You little Cubs have little gardens at school, you learn to grow all kinds of flowers and things. When your flowers grow and bear nice green leaves, sometimes you wonder why they don't grow much nicer, the petals of the flowers are all eaten away, and scarcely a green leaf on them. Now, if you look very, very closely and very, very hard, you will find tiny little flies, slugs, and insects creeping round the flowers.

Do you know why it is you never can see those little pests? It is because nature has "camouflaged" them to protect them from their enemy. Nature has made them the same color as the plants they live upon or at least a similar color, and they are in this peculiar color to deceive their enemy. 

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

iowa trickster makes photographic camouflage / 1919

Antonius J. Viken, Waterloo IA / 1919

Above These three photographs were a reader’s contribution to Popular Mechanics, where they were published in Vol 31 Issue 2 (1919) of that magazine. The photographs were taken by A.J. Viken of Waterloo, Iowa, as examples of makeshift camouflage. Here is the text he submitted—

Practical examples of “camouflage” are shown in these three photographs. In the upper left-hand corner the man has adopted an effective, if somewhat strenuous means of making his appearance blend with his surroundings [by standing on his head, his belt line coincides with the horizon]. To the right, the small rider on the horse’s back is almost indistinguishable against the background of sky and trees, while the lower picture shows how difficult it may be to distinguish such a striking object as a goat.

A.J. Viken (Antonius Johnson Viken) [Skinderviken] was a Norwegian-American photographer. Born in Norway on October 4, 1885, he came to the US in April 1911, and became a naturalized citizen (in Chicago) in 1924. He registered for the draft on September 12, 1918, at Waterloo, where he and his wife Johanna (nee Hansen) Viken lived at 1123 Mulberry Street. As a photographer, he was employed by Louis A. Wangler at 227 East 4th Street in that city. In 1919, when his humorous camouflage photographs were published, his residence was listed as Waterloo, but in later years he also lived in Sioux City IA, Chicago, Jackson Heights NY, and on Long Island, New York. He died in Nassau NY on September 26, 1959.

Among Viken’s associates was photographer and inventor Donald Cameron Biedler (1885-1943). In 1924, both men listed their residence as 864 Buckingham Place, Chicago, in the vicinity of Wrigley Field. 

Beidler was a well-known photographer of wealthy, socially prominent clients (and their children) in Chicago, and later in Manhasset, Long Island NY. Originally from Mt. Pulaski IL, Beidler was a grandson of Jabez Capps, the town's founder. In collaboration with A.J. Viken, he was also invented a special motor-driven children's portrait twin camera, called the Beidler-Viken camera (see below), which they patented in 1925. Although it consisted of two cameras, side-by-side, it was not designed to make stereoscopic images. Instead, it was operated by two photographers, one of whom maintained exact focus on the (squirming) child being photographed, while the other tripped the shutter at the opportune moment. Beidler's Chicago studio was in the Lyon and Healy Building at 64 East Jackson Boulevard, circa 1920. In 1929, he and Viken established the  Beidler-Viken Studios in Manhasset on Long Island. Fourteen years later, Beidler died of a sudden heart attack, while Viken lived until 1959. In Biedler’s obituary, his partner Viken was described as “a man highly skilled in the mechanical end of photography.”

Between the years 1925 through 1936, Antonius J. Viken and Donald C. Beider worked together on a number of technical devices related to photography, including various camera stands (1925, 1930), a camera tiltback adjustment (1931), and their Beidler-Viken camera (1931). But Viken obtained patents independently for other inventions, such as a film hanger (1926), a hood for camera finders (1929), a tripod head (1931), and a film holder and hanger (1936). In 1931, Viken also worked with a bacteriologist, acetone expert, and Chicago physician named Dr. Nathaniel Frutkow (described in a research document as “a somewhat quackish physician specializing in pneumonia”) in patenting a diagnostic table and therapeutic lamp. 

The following is a list, arranged by date, of some (probably not all) of the patented inventions that are attributed to Viken, Beider and Viken, or Viken and Frutkow. Full pdf patent documents can be found online by searching Google Patents.

Stand for camera and the like, 25Aug1925, w/Donald C. Beidler. Film hanger, 4May1926, 1,583,708. Hood for camera finders and the like, 26Nov1929, 1,737,038. Camera and camera stand, 14Jan1930, w/Donald C. Beidler, 1.743,184. Tripod, 10Mar1931, 1,795,747. Tiltback for cameras and the like, 17Mar1931, w/Donald C. Beidler, 1,796,315. Tripod head for portrait camera, 30Jun1931, 1,812,614. Diagnostic table, 15Sep1931, w/Nathaniel Frutkow, 1,823,534. Therapeutic Lamp, 15Sep1931, w/Nathaniel Frutkow, 1,823,535. Camera and the like, 24Nov1931, w/Donald C. Beidler, 1,833,668. Film holder and hanger, 21Jan1936, 2,028,262.

our chef is no dub, and is good at camouflaging grub

Patent Drawings

Above Application drawings for US Patent No US2005/0081272 for a “camouflage hood assembly,” for use in game hunting, invented by Richard Dean Shaklee (2005). The hunter’s face is concealed by a suspended hood, covered with webbing, which the user can see through.

•••

Camouflage in WAR-TIME JINGLES by Men in Service, in The Blue Island Sun (Blue Island IL), damaged page, no readable date (c1918)—

At camouflage our chef’s no dub,
And every day at mess
He practices on all our grub,
With great effectiveness.

He serves a cereal, of course,
For breakfast every day,
The same would even fool a horse,
It tastes so much like hay.

The tea and coffee that is placed
Before us in that hall,
Are camouflaged so they don’t taste
Like anything at all.

And he can camouflage the stew
That’s given us to eat,
So we can’t find a gol darn clew
Of any kind of meat.

On his efficiency I would bank;
Today I tried to take
A bite of solid hickory plank,
Disguised as sirloin steak.

While camouflage may be an art,
We possibly may need,
I’m asking you, please have a heart,
Why camouflage our feed?

Origins of camouflage | a chat about the Trojan Horse

US Patent 2743104

John Kendrick Bangs, AT THE HOUSEBOAT ON THE STYX: The Matter of Camouflage in The Sunday Star (Washington DC), March 24, 1918, Part Four, p. 6—

“The most interesting thing to me about this row [World War I] that is going on on the other side of the river,“ said Michelangelo, as he sculpted the Kaiser’s head out of his camembert and tossed it to Dick Whittington’s cat, “is the business of camouflage, and, proud as I am of my own achievement along the lines of art, I take off my hat to these French and American artists who can kalsomine a fleet of forty-six battleships so that it looks like a strawberry shortcake floating on the surface of the ocean a mile away, and can titivate a battlefront with colored chalk and gewgaws that to the eye of a German spy it appears to be nothing more than a row of peace-loving Charlotte roosters greeting the dawn with a song.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Mike,” said Savonarola, who happened to be lunching at the club that day, having wearied of his third consecutive eat-less week. “I wouldn’t wear out the brim of my hat taking it off to those chaps if I were you. They didn’t invent camouflage. It is as old as the everlasting hills, and I don’t know that your modern camouflage had anything on some of our first families of Italy when it came to flagging an enemy in the good old days of long ago. You were no piker in the camouflage line yourself, Mickey, dear.”

“What, I?” said Michelangelo, apparently very much surprised.

***

George Morrow (Punch), reprinted in Cartoons Magazine (1919)

“Si, signor—sure, pop," said Savonarola. “I have known you to take a piece of plain, common garden, kiln-dried brick that was so poor in quality that it couldn’t even be used on a government contract in Russia, and as raucously red as a New Jersey mud-bank, and with a few deft strokes of your brush turn it into a baby-blue masterpiece that an American squillionaire would pay $945,429.20 for at an auction sale. You know that as well as I do, and then look at Lucretia Borgia—“

“Lucretia Borgia?” echoed Michelangelo. “Oh, come now, Savvy, what in all chimera had Lucretia Borgia to do with camouflage?”

“She was a pippin at it, that’s what,” returned Savonarola. “Camouflage was the lady’s long suit.”

“Well, I never knew that before,” laughed Michelangelo. “As I recall Lucretia’s record she ran a sort of deluxe delicatessen shop for people who were tired of life.”

“Ask Leonardo da Vinci if I am not right,” persisted Savonarola. “How about it, Len?”

“You can search me, Savvy,” smiled da Vinci. “Now you’ve got it you’d better keep the floor yourself.”

US Patent 4989856

“O tut!” retorted Savonarola. “I thought you chaps had some brains. Why, my dearly beloved Bambini, if Lucretia Borgia wasn’t Queen of the May in the line of pure camouflage, I’m blest if I know what else you’d call her. Did you ever see one of her Welsh rabbits?”

“I’ve heard of them,” said da Vinci, “but I never ate one. Fact is, I made it a rule never to eat anything at any of the Borgia chafing dish parties.”

“Sure,” said Savonarola, “ and that’s just my point. These Welsh rabbits of Lucretia’s were pure camouflage—“ Michelangelo laughed.

“Oh, I see,” said he, “you’re thinking of camembert, Savvy. We were talking of camouflage. Camouflage isn’t a cheese, you know.”

"I know what camouflage is just as well as you do,” retorted Savonarola, reddening angrily. “And when I say that Lucretia’s Welsh rabbits were pure camouflage, I mean it. They appeared to be one thing when in reality they were another. On the surface they were the most innocent-looking little bits of golden sunshine that ever gloried a piece of toast. To look at ‘em you’d say that as symbols of peaceful innocence they had the doe lashed to the everlasting mast—but underneath! Largo di Garda, Mike, they were seething maelstroms of destruction, and the man or woman Lucretia wanted permanently removed from the social register after they had eaten a half-portion of a Borgia-made golden buck had about as much chance of getting home alive as they’d have if they’d swallowed a drug store. Socrates’ hemlock cocktail was as buttermilk alongside one of the fair Lucretia’s loganberry flips.”

***

“I hadn’t thought of it in that light, but I see your point,” said Michelangelo, “and while I deprecate Lucretia’s fondness for getting her guests fed up on cyanide of potassium and other indelicacies, I am glad if Italy may lay claim to the paternity of the wonderful art we are discussing.”

US Patent D461331

“Italy nothing,” interjected Shakespeare. “I guess you never read my play of Macbeth, Mike?”

“Ah?” laughed Michelangelo. “Another bit of dramatic camouflage I suspect, my beloved bard—ostensibly Shakespeare, but underneath a mere side of bacon. That it, Bilious?”

“Oh,” said Shakespeare, amiably, “I’m perfectly satisfied to let that matter rest just where it stands. I’m beginning to believe from the way my works are being attributed to everybody but me that even at that I was the most distinguished person of my time, since I seem to be the only guy then living who didn’t write ‘em. But the point I wanted to make was that whoever it was that wrote my play of Macbeth he foresaw this whole business of camouflage when he disguised Macbeth’s enemies as a picnic grove so that when Macbeth saw what he thought was Birnam Wood marching on toward him with a real Sousa swing, it gave him an attack of the Willies that left him as full of pep in the hands of MacDuff as a bolshevik in the presence of a German peace soliloquy. Don’t you remember that line—

As I stand my watch upon the hill
I look’d toward Birnam, and anon methought
The wood began to move.”

“Never heard ‘em before, Bill, but if you say they’re there I’ll take your word for it,” replied Michelangelo. “It only goes to prove my point that after all art is the original knock-out. Whether it was invented by you with your peripatetic picnic park, or Lucretia Borgia with her cunning little rabbits so disengaging in their habits that started it, camouflage was some discovery.”

“If I went further back than you imagine,” put in Priam, sadly, spreading a thick layer of horseradish on his toast, "It may have done a lot for MacDuff, but I went to tell you right now, boys, it ruined me. I had the nicest little kingdom in the world up around Troy. It had Seattle and Oklahoma City and all the rest of your marvels of modern growth backed off the map. We were all happy and prosperous until that fool son of mine, Paris, awarded the blue ribbon for beauty to Venus, and thereby knocked us all galley-west. That decision made certain other ladies of the Olympian Sorosis so immortally mad that they sicked the Greeks on me at a time when preparedness was my short suit. But even at that, they had to use camouflage to put me on the mat. We had ‘em beaten to a frazzle when some wizard on the Greek side got the big idea. He induced Agamemnon to holler for peace, and as a token of Greek sincerity instead of handing me a loving cup, they made me a present of a horse several miles larger than the Statue of Liberty. You know the rest. That old cob looked like a midway stunt at a world’s fair, and while I didn’t want the darned thing any more than London wants Barnard’s statue of Lincoln, I thought it would please the children, and took it.”

***

US Patent 3138376

“And then what?” said Wat Tyler.

“Then what?” roared Priam. “Do you mean to tell me you never heard of the Trojan horse?”

“No,” said Tyler. “I never studied mathematics.”

“Well, it was a horse on me, all right!” said Priam, moodily. “It was built of wood and stucco, and was about the size of Billy Sunday’s tabernacles. It was mounted on wheels and rolled into our Central Park by the Greek peace delegation, and formally accepted by my royal highness as a token of Agamemnon’s love. We made a great festival of the occasion. All the schools were closed for the day, and the leading Nestors and Chauncey Depewsters of the time delivered addresses on the ‘Era of Good Feeling’ and ‘The End of the War’ and ‘The Overthrow of Mars’ and so on, from every angle of that old rag, and then when, as a grand climacteric, I climbed up the old hack’s neck and planted a Trojan flag in one ear and a Greek flag in the other, while the band played ’There Are No Pals Like the Old Pals,’ the populace yelled themselves to exhaustion with joy. Like a Bolshevik boob on a Potsdam payroll, I ordered the army demobilized, and went to bed happy. And then—“

Priam wept bitter tears.

***

“And the camouflage got in its fine work,” he resumed, nerving himself up with a long deep draft of Worcestershire sauce. “That old horse wasn’t a horse at all. It was a cantonment! Instead of being a mere bit of equine pleasantry it turned out to be a division of Rough Riders, only they rode inside the horse instead of on his back. The horrible beast held the whole Greek general staff, fifteen brigades of discus throwers, seven regiments of natural gasoliers armed to the teeth the fiercest kind of Greek propaganda, and a highly efficient fire department that for making things burn to ashes beat anything in that line in all history. They started the home fires burning and kept ‘em going to the last flicker of the ultimate ember. In short, Wat, while I slept, dreaming sweet dreams of peace, those Greeks inside shinned down that old jade’s hind legs, and when I waked up in the morning Troy was a flickering reminiscence.…”

US Patent 2448390

“Well,” said Homer, who had been a yawning listener to the discussion, “you’re all off in thinking the Trojan horse was the beginning of camouflage…Savonarola was right when he said camouflage was as old as the hills…

“Noah probably thought Ararat was a sea beach until he found his own scow stranded on top of a mountain. Eve doubtless thought the serpent was a gentleman and discovered later that he was a snake. Life is full of it. That things are seldom what they seem the sages have told us for myriads of years. Art is eternal, and eternity works both ways, fore and aft. We have always had camouflage and we’ll continue to have it to the end.”

Teddy Bear Camouflage

US Patent No 285,951

Above One of several drawings submitted for US Patent No. 285,951, titled "Stuffed Toy Bear," invented by Sarah J. Raymo (1986).

•••

Rian James, "Protective Coloring" in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 3, 1932, p. 21—

I love the snob's bold camouflage,
Which is a personal mirage
To clothe the timid man inside,
A primal creature's way to hide.
Confused and groping consternation,
Against veneered civilization.

I love the snob's cold camouflage;
I'd seek to make my own barrage,
Oh, cutting glance, oh, chilling leer,
A snob's effective, bright veneer.
I'd like to be a snob, and see
Just what a first rate ass I'D be!

•••

Associate Press, INTEMPERATE BREATH in Plattsburgh Sentinel, May 14, 1920, p. 1—

NEW YORK, May 13—A teddy bear whose mouth gave forth a strong and intemperate odor aroused the curiosity of customs inspectors searching the crew's quarters aboard the steamship Morro Castle. They ripped off the head and found a canister full of whiskey where only sawdust should be.

Three hot water bottles in the room of a husky chef also [raised] suspicion and they were found to contain whiskey.

It was reported that the inspectors found 200 bottles altogether.

Camouflage Artist | Manley Kercheval Nash

We've been trying to find information about an American artist named Manley Kercheval Nash, pictured above c1918, when he was working for the US Navy in Washington DC as one of its camouflage artists. This portrait is a detail from a larger government photograph (reproduced below) of the ship model-painting room of the design subsection of the Navy's Camouflage Section.

Nash, who is seated in the right foreground, is applying a dazzle camouflage scheme to a wooden ship model, which will then be tested for its effectiveness in a specially-designed observation theatre.

Given the historical prominence of all three of Nash's names, perhaps he was descended from venerable families in the South. One source states that Nash was born in Fleming County KY in 1882. There was a lawyer named Samuel Kercheval (1767-1845), who wrote an early well-known history of the Shenandoah Valley (A History of the Valley of Virginia). And Nashville TN was named for the Revolutionary War hero, Francis Nash (1742-1777), who also grew up in Virginia. Manley may also be a family name, and a quick look on the internet finds people who have name combinations like Kercheval Nash, Manley Nash, and so on.

So Manley K. Nash (1882-1947) remains a mystery more or less. One source (Edan Hughes, Artists in California 1786-1940) claims he studied art in Paris in 1905 (as did everyone at the time). When he returned to the US, he apparently lived briefly in (possibly) Harris TX, then moved to St Louis MO, where he painted scenery for the stage, and where other relatives may have settled. After World War I, he moved to southern California, and then, prior to 1930, to Oklahoma City OK. While on the West Coast, he must have made connections with Hollywood movie studios because he continued to paint stage sets for films and in 1938 (according to Hughes) "painted the burning of Atlanta for Gone With the Wind." Moving back to St. Louis, he may have taught at the School of Fine Arts at Washington University, where he himself had studied art as an undergraduate.

Not much to go on really. But we did find one other curious bit. It seems that in 1940, with Hollywood listed as his residence, Nash and another person named Arthur J. Thomas were granted a patent for a toothbrush (US Patent No 2246867) that features a "polishing and massaging element" that "combines with the bristles in cleaning and polishing the teeth [while] also imparting gentle massaging action to [the gums]." Their patent drawing is below.

Camouflage Artist | McClelland Barclay

From the McClelland Barclay entry in CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage, pp. 40-41—

American illustrator McClelland Barclay (1891-July 18, 1943) [see top right photo above] was originally from St. Louis MO. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, then with George Bridgman and Thomas Fogarty at the Art Students League in New York. As early as 1912, his work was often featured in major US magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Saturday Evening Post and Ladies’ Home Journal.

During World War I, he produced recruiting posters for the US government, and worked with William Andrew MacKay in designing ship camouflage for the US Shipping Board.

In the 1920s and 30s, Barclay was widely known as an advertising illustrator, designing posters for the film industry, painting “pin-up girl” illustrations, and developing marketing images for leading manufacturers, the most popular of which were his paintings of sexy models for General Motors’ Body by Fisher sales campaign.

In 1938, he was appointed an Assistant Naval Constructor with the US Naval Reserve. He again worked on camouflage, and in 1940 he obtained a patent titled “Camouflaging” (US Patent No. 2190691) [top left above] for dazzle-like aircraft camouflage. In that year, an article in the New York Times reported that his patent was “for the camouflaging of airplanes by painting the wings with designs that were said to conceal the shape and make it difficult to judge the position of an airplane.” Some of his designs were applied to prototypes and tested [photos of three prototypes are pictured here], but were never actually implemented. During World War II, Barclay continued to experiment with camouflage and to design recruiting posters. Appointed a Lieutenant Commander, he was a passenger on a US Navy vessel that was struck by a torpedo near the Solomon Islands on July 18, 1943.

Also pictured above (in the bottom photo) is an earlier example of dazzle-like airplane camouflage (unrelated to Barclay's work), as published in the New York Herald in 1919, in which it was described as "an upside down flyer" and "a weirdly camouflaged airplane that was a feature in the recent aerial pageant at Hendon, England. Note the dummy landing carriage atop the upper plane and silhouetted pilot's head beneath the fuselage designed to puzzle the spectators as to whether or not the plane is flying rightside up."

additional sources

Embedded Figure Camouflage

Drawings for US Patent No. 2,670,961, by Charles E. Winters (1954)

Shown here are the drawings for a patented game-like invention called "Puzzle," devised by Charles E. Winters of Crawfordsville IN. US Patent No. 2,670,961 (1954). It's essentially about the detection of embedded figures (or camouflaged figures), in which a shape is hard to see because it is subdivided by other shapes (called figure disruption or dazzle) and/or because its context (or background) is distracting and complex. As seen in the lower drawing, in this game, simple drawings of animals become a challenge to detect when a larger complex drawing (printed on a transparent sheet acetate) is superimposed on them.

Fringed Camouflage

Shown here are two of the patent drawings for camouflaged clothing invented by Douglas N. Hamilton, and registered as US Patent Number 5,010,589, dated April 30, 1991. Intended for hunters or soldiers, it has two advantages that come from its use of removable fringe (see 13) that hangs below the sleeves. One advantage (for hunters) is that scents or lures could be applied to the fringe only, instead of applying them to the main garment. Different scents could be applied to different sets of fringes, and then easily interchanged. In addition, according to the patent's text, the fringe "break[s] up the outline of the human body of the user and thus improves the camouflage of the wearer."

This reminds us of a passage in Eliot Wigginton, Foxfire 5. Garden City NY: Anchor Books, 1979, p. 411—

When asked about their buckskins, Hawk said, "The story is that it [the leather fringe] helped water drain off in a downpour instead of soaking into the cloth, but I don't go along with that…But I believe that one thing that it did do, whether they realized it or not: it helped to break up the silhouette when they were in the woods. I mean, if you were dripping with fringes and things, you would blend in with the woods easier than if you were just a hard silhouette."