Clovis Hanks Liquid-Heated Garment
Heated clothes were originally designed for outdoor activities in cold climates
The following text was published on:
CARLES, Cedric; ORTIZ, Thomaz; DUSSERT, Eric. Retrotech and Lowtech – how forgotten patents can shake the future. Paleo-energy press, 2020, 212 p.
and I kindly ask permission to reproduce it.
Clovis Hanks’s Liquid-Heated Garment
Year: 1969
Beyond questions of morality or modesty, one of the primary functions of clothing is to protect the body from thermal fluctuations. Clovis H. Hanks had this in mind when, in 1969, he made a warming garment “for people doing outdoor activities in cold climates”.
Hanks’s garment consisted of a jacket with leg extensions, leggings and a hat. The fabric was fitted with flexible tubes that contained a warm liquid. A small, self-contained heating unit, worn across the shoulder, held a fuel reservoir to heat the liquid; equipped with this wearable heating, a person was ready to face the cold while retaining freedom of movement.
As with Japanese kotatsu, the concept of heating close to the body is often more efficient than heating an entire room or building. In the near future, we may see warming garments that incorporate thermal adjustment, especially in light of recent technological innovations in the field of textiles based on ceramic fibers, which provide effective insulation by preventing the loss of infrared radiation from the body.
