History Of Camouflage

The word "Camouflage" comes from the French word "Camoufler", which means "to blind or veil". Camouflage is also sometimes called protective concealment. it means to hide an object/person/animal in order to conceal it from something or someone.

In the 1800's an American artist called Abbot Thayer made an observation about animals that later became very useful in moders camouflage. Abbot Thayer noticed that many animals went from dark, on the back to almost white on they bellies. An object that goes from dark to light makes it harder to see the object as one thing. Also it loses its 3D quality and looks flat.

Here are a couple of images painted by Abbot Thayer. where you can see that you have to look really hard to spot the things he has hidden in these two images. In one of them you can see a snake and the other one a peacock.