NOVA Documentary on Plate Armor

Discussion in 'Fire Lotus Tavern' started by Spartus, Oct 6, 2017.

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  1. Spartus

    Spartus Avatar

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    There was an interesting NOVA documentary on the US PBS television network this week called Secrets of the Shining Knight, where modern blacksmiths and researchers tried to understand and recreate Greenwich plate armor. They explained how medieval Europe lost a lot of knowledge of armor-making from the Greeks and Roman era due to loss of infrastructure--it is a difficult thing to create without a lot of infrastructure, and their simpler chain mail didn't always cut it. They explained how/why Henry VIII created a huge plate mail armory for its time.

    They showed how the layering of metal sheets (I believe it's called a "lame") allows great flexibility. Surprisingly, after spending hundreds of hours smelting and forging, they were able to closely match, microscopically, the crystalline structure of the carbon steel with the ancient armor.

    But the most fascinating part for me was their musketball test. I had assumed that the invention of firearms made plate armor obsolete, but the documentary explained that knights in plate armor were one of the first adopters of firearms (imagine knights with guns).

    In their initial testing, the musketball was fired at the common plate armor and...

    ... pierced it, but when the armor was designed to mimic the elite, decorative armor...the musketball exploded on impact and just made a dent. The documentary gave me a lot of respect for the decorative armors that I see in museums (and also in this game), of which I've always wondered whether or not they could be used in battle. Apparently some can.

    Many, including myself, assumed that most of the design was stylistic, the peascod breastplate, for example. This seems to be one of the times when style followed function, rather than the other way around. (Similarly, I've been wondering about those new SpaceX spacesuits, which parts are stylistic and which are functional...)

    The show has been repeating on my local television affiliate this week, including later today (Friday) so some of those in the US may be able to catch it on their local PBS affiliate.

    Also, I enjoyed Secrets of the Viking Sword, another NOVA that aired a few years ago, but I was glad that they did one on armor. Plate armor seems very difficult to create, and the sad part is realizing that its whole purpose is to withstand impacts (it gradually gets destroyed). They mentioned how the common people couldn't even afford the good stuff, so it was a fairly exotic defense. They also said that the creators of the armor were akin to scientists, testing and re-testing their changes to observe the results.
     
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  2. Kabalyero Kidd

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    I waited for them to test the newly created armor with a modern gun but I guess a modern gun will blow it away... :D
     
  3. Vallin Tregres

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