History
Significant factors in the development of armour include the economic and technological necessities of armour production. For instance, plate armour first appeared in Medieval Europe when water-powered trip hammers made the formation of plates faster and cheaper. Also, modern militaries usually do not equip their forces with the best armour available, since it would be prohibitively expensive. At times the development of armour has run parallel to the development of increasingly effective weaponry on the battlefield, with armourers seeking to create better protection without sacrificing mobility.
Well known armour types in European history include the lorica hamata, lorica squamata, and the lorica segmentata of the Roman legions, the mail hauberk of the early medieval age, and the full steel plate harness worn by later medieval and renaissance knights, and breast and back plates worn by heavy cavalry in several European countries until the first year of World War I (1914–15). The samurai warriors of feudal Japan utilized many types of armour for hundreds of years up to the 19th century.
Read more about this topic: Leather Armour, Personal
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)