Glove


A glove is a garment covering the hand, with separate sheaths or openings for each finger including the thumb. Gloves protect and comfort hands against cold or heat, damage by friction, abrasion or chemicals, and disease; or in turn to provide a guard for what a bare hand should not touch.
Gloves are made of materials including cloth, knitted or felted wool, leather, rubber, latex, neoprene, silk, and metal. Gloves of kevlar protect the wearer from cuts. Gloves and gauntlets are integral components of pressure suits and spacesuits.
Latex, nitrile rubber or vinyl disposable gloves are often worn by health care professionals as hygiene and contamination protection measures. Police officers often wear them to work in crime scenes to prevent destroying evidence in the scene. Many criminals wear gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints, which makes the crime investigation more difficult. However, the gloves themselves can leave prints that are just as unique as human fingerprints.
If there is an opening but no covering sheath for each finger they are called fingerless gloves. Fingerless gloves are useful where dexterity is required that gloves would restrict. Cigarette smokers and church organists sometimes use fingerless gloves. Cycling gloves for road racing or touring are usually fingerless. Guitar players may also use fingerless gloves in circumstances where it is too cold to play with an uncovered hand.
A hybrid of glove and mitten contains open-ended sheaths for the four fingers and an additional compartment encapsulating the four fingers. This compartment can be lifted off the fingers and folded back to allow the individual fingers ease of movement and access while the hand remains covered. The usual design is for the mitten cavity to be stitched onto the back of the fingerless glove only, allowing it to be flipped over to transform the garment from a mitten to a glove. These hybrids are called convertible mittens or "glittens".

History

Gloves appear to be of great antiquity. They are depicted in an ancient Egyptian tomb dating to the 5th dynasty. According to some translations of Homer's The Odyssey, Laërtes is described as wearing gloves while walking in his garden so as to avoid the brambles. Herodotus, in The History of Herodotus, tells how Leotychides was incriminated by a glove full of silver that he received as a bribe. There are occasional references to the use of gloves among the Romans as well. Pliny the Younger, his uncle's shorthand writer wore gloves in winter so as not to impede the elder Pliny's work.
A gauntlet, which could be a glove made of leather or some kind of metal armour, was a strategic part of a soldier's defense throughout the Middle Ages, but the advent of firearms made hand-to-hand combat rare. As a result, the need for gauntlets disappeared.
During the 13th century, gloves began to be worn by ladies as a fashion ornament. They were made of linen and silk, and sometimes reached to the elbow. Such worldly accoutrements were not for holy women, according to the early 13th century Ancrene Wisse, written for their guidance. Sumptuary laws were promulgated to restrain this vanity: against samite gloves in Bologna, 1294, against perfumed gloves in Rome, 1560.
A Paris corporation or guild of glovers existed from the thirteenth century. They made them in skin or in fur.
By 1440, in England glovers had become members of the Dubbers or Bookbinders Guild until they formed their own guild during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Glovers' Company was incorporated in 1613.
It was not until the 16th century that gloves reached their greatest elaboration, however, when Queen Elizabeth I set the fashion for wearing them richly embroidered and jewelled, and for putting them on and taking them off during audiences to draw attention to her beautiful hands. The 1592 "Ditchley" portrait of her features her holding leather gloves in her left hand. In Paris, the gantiers became gantiers parfumeurs, for the scented oils, musk, ambergris and civet, that perfumed leather gloves, but their trade, which was an introduction at the court of Catherine de Medici, was not specifically recognised until 1656, in a royal brevet. Makers of knitted gloves, which did not retain perfume and had less social cachet, were organised in a separate guild, of bonnetiers who might knit silk as well as wool. Such workers were already organised in the fourteenth century. Knitted gloves were a refined handiwork that required five years of apprenticeship; defective work was subject to confiscation and burning. In the 17th century, gloves made of soft chicken skin became fashionable. The craze for gloves called "limericks" took hold. This particular fad was the product of a manufacturer in Limerick, Ireland, who fashioned the gloves from the skin of unborn calves.
Embroidered and jeweled gloves formed part of the insignia of emperors and kings. Thus Matthew of Paris, in recording the burial of Henry II of England in 1189, mentions that he was buried in his coronation robes with a golden crown on his head and gloves on his hands. Gloves were found on the hands of King John when his tomb was opened in 1797 and on those of King Edward I when his tomb was opened in 1774.
Pontifical gloves are liturgical ornaments used primarily by the pope, the cardinals, and bishops. They may be worn only at the celebration of mass. The liturgical use of gloves has not been traced beyond the beginning of the 10th century, and their introduction may have been due to a simple desire to keep the hands clean for the holy mysteries, but others suggest that they were adopted as part of the increasing pomp with which the Carolingian bishops were surrounding themselves. From the Frankish kingdom the custom spread to Rome, where liturgical gloves are first heard of in the earlier half of the 11th century.
When short sleeves came into fashion in the 1700s, women began to wear long gloves, reaching halfway up the forearm. By the 1870s, buttoned kid, silk, or velvet gloves were worn with evening or dinner dress, and long suede gloves were worn during the day and when having tea.
Mainly during the 19th century, the generic or trade name "Berlin gloves" was used for washable, thin white cotton gloves often worn by servants, such as butlers or waiters, and the less well-off in civilian life. The term was also used for white cotton gloves worn with the dress uniform by the American military in the First World War.
In 1905, The Law Times made one of the first references to the use of gloves by criminals to hide fingerprints, stating: For the future... when the burglar goes a-burgling, a pair of gloves will form a necessary part of his outfit.
Early Formula One race cars used steering wheels taken directly from road cars. They were normally made from wood, necessitating the use of driving gloves.
Disposable latex gloves were developed by the Australian company Ansell.

Types of glove

Commercial and industrial

  • Aircrew gloves: while they enable the wearer to touch a hot surface while retreating, they are insufficient for burn protection
  • Anti-vibration gloves
  • Barbed wire handler's gloves
  • Chainmail gloves are used by butchers, woodcutters and police
  • Chainsaw safety gloves
  • Chemical-resistant gloves
  • Cotton knitted gloves are used in automotive workshops, building maintenance, logistic material movement
  • Temperature protective gloves
  • Cut-resistant gloves
  • Fireman's gauntlets
  • Food service gloves
  • Gardening gloves
  • Impact protection gloves
  • Medical gloves
  • Military gloves
  • Rubber gloves
  • Sandblasting gloves
  • Welder's gloves
  • Wildlife handling gloves

    Sport and recreational

  • American football various position gloves
  • Archer's glove
  • Baseball glove or catcher's mitt: in baseball, the players in the field wear gloves to help them catch the ball and prevent injury to their hands.
  • Billiards glove
  • Boxing gloves: a specialized padded mitten
  • Cricket gloves
  • * The batsmen wear gloves with heavy padding on the back, to protect the fingers in case of being struck with the ball.
  • * The wicket keeper wears large webbed gloves.
  • Cycling gloves
  • Driving gloves intended to improve the grip on the steering wheel. Driving gloves have external seams, open knuckles, open backs, ventilation holes, short cuffs, and wrist snaps. The most luxurious are made from Peccary gloving leather.
  • Eton Fives glove
  • Falconry glove
  • Fencing glove
  • Football – goalkeeper glove
  • Gardening glove
  • Golf glove
  • Ice hockey glove
  • Gym gloves
  • Riding gloves
  • Racquetball gloves
  • Lacrosse gloves
  • Kendo kote
  • MMA gloves
  • Motorcycling gloves
  • Oven gloves – or oven mitts, used when cooking
  • Paintball glove
  • Racing drivers gloves with long cuffs, intended for protection against heat and flame for drivers in automobile competitions.
  • Scuba diving gloves:
  • * Cotton gloves; good abrasion, but no thermal protection
  • * Dry gloves; made of rubber with a latex wrist seal to prevent water entry
  • * Wet gloves; made of neoprene and allowing restricted water entry
  • Shooting glove
  • * Biathlon glove – an articulated padded combination of a skiing glove and a shooting glove, offers cold temperature protection outside in winter, as well as padding to support the.22lr ammunition single-action / Fortner-action biathlon rifle, and is suitable for using with poles in cross country skiing.
  • * Pistol glove – used in competition pistol shooting to improve performance and cushion the shooting hand.
  • * Target rifle glove – open-fingered heavily padded one-hand glove with non-skid surfaces, used to support the rifle in prone shooting position. Also may be used in kneeling, sitting and standing positions. The glove cushions and distributes the weight of the rifle, which varies from to, depending on type of rifle stock used.
  • Skiing gloves are padded and reinforced to protect from the cold, and from injury by skis.
  • Touchscreen gloves – made with conductive material to enable the wearer's natural electric capacitance to interact with capacitive touchscreen devices without the need to remove one's gloves
  • * Finger tip conductivity; where conductive yarns or a conductive patch is found only on the tips of the fingers thus allowing for basic touch response
  • * Full hand conductivity; where the entire glove is made from conductive materials allowing for robust tactile touch and dexterity good for accurate typing and multi-touch response
  • Underwater hockey gloves – with protective padding, usually of silicone rubber or latex, across the back of the fingers and knuckles to protect from impact with the puck; usually only one, either left- or right-hand, is worn depending on which is the playing hand.
  • Washing mitt or Washing glove: a tool for washing the body.
  • Webbed gloves – a swim training device or swimming aid.
  • Weightlifting gloves
  • Wired glove
  • * Power Glove – an alternate controller for use with the Nintendo Entertainment System
  • Wheelchair gloves – for users of manual wheelchairs