Camouflage

Camouflage is that which allows an otherwise visible object to remain unseen. Thus a tiger's stripes or the clothing of a modern soldier are both examples of camouflage.

Successful camouflage is often an essential part of modern military tactics. The first recorded large-scale use of camouflage was during World War I. The French established a section de camouflage in 1915, and the idea was quickly taken up by the British, Americans and even the Germans, Italians and Russians. World War I also saw the advent of ship camouflage. Although most gunships were still painted a uniform grey, five schemes were approved in the United States for merchant ship camouflage. Ships without camouflage were required to pay higher war risk premiums.

William MacKay, the creator of a popular scheme of camouflage approved by the Naval Consulting Board during World War I, wrote:

The structural and characteristic lines and angles of a ship can be either softened or destroyed. According as the ship is viewed through [a] red or green or blue filter the ship presents three different images and though none of them an image so definite as a ship painted with a flat pigment gray.

This remains one of the most crucial elements in the theory of camouflage - an exact match with the environment's colours is less crucial than the patterning of the regions of colour themselves. Ideally, camouflage should be made to break up and thereby conceal the structural lines of the object which it hides. Thus, the patterns often seen on camouflage clothing, masking cloth and vehicle paints are carefully constructed to decieve the human eye by breaking up the boundries that define sharp edges and human silhouettes. Similarly, a tiger's stripes, when viewed in the context of long grass or deeply shaded forest, have the same effect - making it hard to differentiate the tiger from the background.

External Sources:

http://www.shipcamouflage.com/2_1.htm

http://www.arts.ufl.edu/art/rt_room/sparkers/camouflage/history.html

http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/spec.projects/camouflagebib.html