Body Armor
Body Armor.Protective covering and other equipment designed to guard individuals in combat dates back to early warfare. Rocks, clubs, and arrows were deflected by hand‐held shields, later augmented by helmets and coverings for the chest, arms, and legs. Protective coverings were made of leather, wood, shells, or basketwork, later replaced by bronze, iron, and steel. The mounted knights of medieval Europe were clad in chain mail, armor plate, and helmets; their horses, too, were partially encased.
Some soldiers in the early North American colonies wore metal helmets and breastplates, but these proved cumbersome in the woodlands and were soon abandoned. Gunpowder cannon and small arms, and the increasing mobility of warfare, diminished the importance of personal armor, which finally disappeared by the end of the seventeenth century.
Steel helmets reappeared in the twentieth century largely to protect against shrapnel and fragments from...
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