ARMOUR encyclopedia topics

ARMOUR - 3 reference results

or body armour

Suit of 15th-century European plate armour.

Protective clothing that can shield the wearer from weapons and projectiles. By extension, armour is also protective covering for animals, vehicles, and so on. Prehistoric warriors used leather hides and helmets. Chinese warriors used rhinoceros skin in the 11th century BC, and Greek infantry wore thick, multilayered metal-and-linen cuirasses (armour covering the body from neck to waist) in the 5th century BC. Shirts of chain mail were worn throughout the Roman Empire, and mail was the chief armour of western Europe until the 14th century. Ancient Greeks and Romans used armour made of rigid metal plates, which reappeared in Europe around the 13th century. Plate armour dominated European design until the 17th century, when firearms began to make it obsolete. It began to disappear in the 18th century, but the helmet reappeared in World War I and became standard equipment. Modern body armour (the bulletproof vest) covers the chest and sometimes the groin; it is a flexible garment reinforced with steel plates, fibreglass, boron carbide, or multiple layers of synthetic fabric such as Kevlar.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

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Armour, Philip Danforth

(born May 16, 1832, Stockbridge, N.Y., U.S.—died Jan. 6, 1901, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. entrepreneur and innovator. Armour's first entrepreneurial success was in California mining endeavours. He vastly expanded his family's Midwestern grain and meatpacking business in 1875, originating the use of byproducts and the sale of canned meat. When railcar refrigeration was introduced in the 1880s (see Gustavus Franklin Swift), he established distributing plants in eastern states and began exporting Armour meat products to Europe. His Armour & Co. enterprises helped make Chicago the meatpacking capital of the world.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.