Alternative Views

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Second Look

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Touchpoint View

Animation

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Audio Clip

The Hockey Sweater

Listen to Hockey Hall of Fame curator Philip Pritchard talk about the hockey sweater.

Credit: Audio produced by TMC

Transcript

The game was traditionally played outdoors. So, obviously, because the games were outdoors on natural rinks, the equipment and the jerseys had to…work towards the player’s advantage so, for the jersey it’d be warm so it’d be wool, the equipment would be lighter. As time went on, hockey became an indoor sport and artificial rinks were being made, so the jersey altered as well. So did the equipment. The jerseys no longer had to be pure wool, they could be a combination of, of wool and poly and cotton. And in today’s game where there’s the whites of the ice, there’s the television lights, and there’s up to 20 000 plus seats being filled by people in the game, we have a natural warmth created by everyone. So in today’s environment the jersey is 100% polyester and it’s tied in with the new air…air dry jersey so when a player is playing, although they have the t.v. lights on them and everything, their sweat absorbs instantly. And in today’s technology that’s what a jersey is needed for a player to play at this caliber. So, as you’ve seen over a hundred years the jerseys have altered a lot, but it’s all because of the way the game has altered as well.

Video

Hockey’s place in winter

Watch a video of children playing hockey on an outdoor rink in Canada in the 1940s.

Credit: Video Courtesy of National Film Board of Canada

Artifact Narrative

Jacquard portraits

Before the invention of the jacquard loom, very little cloth with figurative imagery was woven. Tapestry and drawloom-made brocade – the only woven structures capable of producing a recognizable image – were rare because of the time required to make them. In 1804, French inventor Joseph Marie Jacquard introduced the loom that still bears his name. Although other inventors laid the groundwork for Jacquard, it was his loom that mechanized the operation of lifting and lowering warp threads by means of a machine with perforated cards. The jacquard loom has been called the ancestor of the first computers, which also used perforated cards to create instructions in binary code.

Collection Connections

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