A brief history of the raincoat
Autumn has suddenly arrived and pushed summer aside. The third season takes many forms and paves the way for winter. It can be golden and summery, inviting you to take long walks through a colourful forest. But autumn can also be wild and stormy, freezing cold and rainy, so that the prospect of a hot drink on a cosy sofa in a snug, warm environment is far more appealing than the thought of having to set foot outside. However, as the saying goes: there’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothing. So, you couch potatoes, take note: when the rain comes pouring down from the sky, put on your raincoat and head out into the fresh air. You’ll stay dry, figuratively speaking, thanks to the British chemist Charles Macintosh (1766–1843), who knew how to put the water-repellent properties of polymer materials to effective and profitable use in the clothing industry.
Macintosh – the name stands for quality. For once, this does not refer to the ‘Mac’ computer of the same name from the US company Apple, but to a quintessentially British – or, to be more precise, Scottish – product. We are talking about the first ‘raincoat’ in the history of textiles. If the sources are to be believed, its invention is attributed to the Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh (1766–1843).
How it all began
The history of the raincoat, however – or so it would seem – does not begin with Charles Macintosh, but with Sir James Syme (1799–1870), a Scottish doctor who made a name for himself particularly as an anatomist and surgeon; a method of foot amputation for heel defects, for example, is named after Sir Syme.
Sir Syme was evidently a man of wide-ranging interests. He was active not only in medicine – where he enjoyed a remarkable career despite not holding an official degree – but also in scientific fields such as chemistry, where his work included the production of waterproof textile dyes. Charles Macintosh recognised the potential of what Sir Syme was developing in his laboratory and acquired the patent.
At the time, Macintosh was experimenting with a by-product of coal gasification, from which he extracted ammonia, which he needed for the production of a violet-red dye. This process yielded, as a by-product, coal tar (coal tar-naphtha), a type of solvent which, interestingly, could not be mixed with water. Macintosh thought for a moment and set to work. He coated, or rather impregnated, thin layers of cotton with the liquid and ultimately produced a rubbery, waterproof fabric.
A good idea
His delight at discovering the material’s waterproof properties must have been immense, though it was marred by minor – let’s call them modest – flaws: the material was incredibly sticky and smelled dreadful.
Macintosh made a virtue of necessity and resorted to the ‘sandwich’ technique. He overcame the problem of stickiness by coating a sheet of fabric and, taking advantage of the adhesive layer’s tendency to cling, laminating it with another sheet of fabric. This resulted in a water-repellent, no longer sticky, easy-to-handle double-layered material, for which he applied for a patent in 1823.
The unspeakably rubbery odour that the fabric gave off remained a problem; even today, traditional rain jackets tend to have a very distinctive smell. Nevertheless, Macintosh’s invention proved highly popular, for example with the British Army, which evidently saw it as an opportunity to better protect its soldiers from the rain and to maintain the troops’ morale and combat effectiveness even in adverse weather conditions.
A Strong Partner on the Road to Success
It wasn’t long before Thomas Hancock (1786–1865), the founder of the British rubber industry, recognised the potential of the invention and acquired a licence from Charles Macintosh to manufacture double-layered waterproof materials. Hancock, it should be noted in passing, had discovered that rubber becomes malleable and deformable when rolled, which made the use of rubber on an industrial scale possible. Building on the vulcanisation process developed by Charles Goodyear (1800–1860), an American chemist and inventor of, amongst other things, hard rubber (ebonite), Hancock designed and built machines for processing rubber. Both Goodyear and Hancock, it should also be mentioned for the sake of completeness, had filed a patent application for vulcanisation. In a subsequent patent dispute, priority was awarded to Goodyear.
Thomas Hancock therefore took up Charles Macintosh’s invention – namely, the waterproofing of textiles – and improved it using his vulcanisation process, for which he applied for a patent in 1843. Initial difficulties with the rubber coating – such as strong odour, stiffness and poor washability in hot water – were overcome. Genuine Mackintosh raincoats were made entirely by hand and featured glued rather than sewn hems. Incidentally, over time the spelling with ‘ck’ became more common, presumably with a view to making the brand name known not only in England but worldwide, or because the ‘ck’ spelling was more widely recognised internationally.
Macintosh recognised the achievements of his licensee Hancock and made him a partner in his firm, Charles Macintosh & Co., in 1831. This marked the beginning of a long and successful partnership. Even today, the name Macintosh (Mac) or Mackintosh (Mack) remains a guarantee of excellent rainwear, the origins of which date back to 1824.
What followed
As history unfolded, other companies followed suit in the field of rainwear. One such example was the firm founded in 1894 in South Shields (north-east England) by John Barbour (1849–1918) and named after him. John Barbour, like Charles Macintosh and Sir James Syme, was Scottish and presumably fed up with the constant rain in his homeland. There is hardly any other explanation for why he, too, became involved in the manufacture of rainwear.
Barbour’s wax jackets are high-priced and enjoy a good reputation worldwide – not just amongst hunters and anglers. These weatherproof wax jackets are made from cotton or cotton-blend fabric, which is impregnated with a wax-oil mixture or with wax alone.
In Germany, around 1920, master tailor Johann Klepper expanded his range of sports and outdoor clothing to include rainwear. According to the company, the inventor of the Klepper folding boat developed what is known as the ‘ ’ Klepper coat – ‘a milestone in German textile history’. The Klepper website states: “For decades, this rubber-coated cotton coat has kept many people dry in wet weather. In its day, the Klepper coat was one of the first items of clothing to earn the title: ‘absolutely waterproof’.
However, the Klepper coat was anything but breathable; in other words, you’d sweat like a pig in it: This was a constant source of concern for Johann Klepper, as the Klepper company reports: ‘In 1949, he optimised his invention and added a sophisticated system of ventilation channels: the “Rillo ventilation”. From then on, this innovation ensured significantly improved air circulation. And so the legendary rubber-coated Klepper coat continued to be manufactured in many different styles right up until 1969.
PVC rain jackets in vogue
From 1950 onwards, more and more raincoats were manufactured using polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which we will discuss in detail later on. One of the most famous items of rainwear was the so-called ‘Friesennerz’, which enjoyed great popularity amongst professional fishermen and sailors, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. The polyester developed by DuPont served as the textile base material; the PVC coating made it waterproof and – thanks mainly to its bright yellow colour – highly visible.
Waterproof clothing such as the Friesennerz keeps you fairly dry even in heavy rain – provided you don’t have to move around. For one thing is obvious: to use a simple analogy, anyone sitting under a plastic sheet may not get wet from the outside, but they have to put up with the sweat that condenses on the inside of the sheet. (Johann Klepper already learnt this the hard way.) This drawback is eliminated if the raincoat is ‘breathable’, as are many of the synthetic fabrics used today in sports and leisurewear. These polymer materials do not have ventilation slits, but rather a so-called climate membrane (Gore-Tex, Sympatex, etc.), which is more or less semi-permeable, meaning that sweat is transported from the inside to the outside via pores in the material. Rainwater, however, does not penetrate through these pores into the garment.
Polymer all-rounders
It is not just the material that matters, but also knowing how to use it effectively. The plastics and rubber industry not only works with what are arguably the most innovative materials, but also employs what are probably the most astute and creative materials experts. A bright future lies ahead...
Guido Deußing (guido.deussing@pressetextkom.de)