Gas Masks
“…a cotton pad soaked in sodium carbonate and sodium thiosulphate which, tied over his nose and mouth, afforded protection against chlorine gas.”
(This is a piece in a series of drawings of various gas masks. See all of them over here.)
During the later months of 1915, a gas mask consisting of a leather facepiece with eyepieces and a metal canister was issued to the German army. The facepiece was impregnated qith tallow and oil to make it gas-proof, the eyepieces were compound, with am outer glass lens and an inner lens of celluloid treated to prevent misting, and the canister contained layers of absorbant materials – charcoal. pumice and kieselguhr – mixed with various chemicals to filter and absorb the gases.
I’ve been drawing the masks I found in a thrft store book Gas. This is the third in a series. See them all here.
Another mask from the Gas book.
Another thrift store find from the other day was this book on gas warfare from 1975:
I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, but I pretty much got it for the pictures anyways. Like this guy in an early French gas mask. It was pretty much just 32 layers of the finely woven cotton fabric muslin.
