The Natick Revolution

..In the town of Natick, Massachusetts, on Rte 27, between Rtes 9 & 135, there sits an Army facility. Founded in 1949, it would become responsible for changes in what you wear, how you eat, and how you protect yourself from the elements...

Chances are your closet, and your pantry, are stocked with items originally designed and/or tested for military use by the Natick Labs.

Remember the 70s, and the popular snorkel parkas? We used to buy them from Army-Navy stores, but they became so popular a fashion (as the Navy Pea Coat, before them) that stores started selling knock off copies. They came from the Natick Labs.

Go to any supermarket. Among the shelves of prepared food items and ready to serve meals, you'll find sealed plastic dishes containing a full serving for one. Don't have to refrigerate until it's opened, has a shelf life of about five years. That's what the technology behind the MRE has provided for you.

This fall, if you go to the sporting goods store, or to a ski shop, and look for polypropylene long underwear, or artificial fiber fleece jackets and vests, then you're looking for clothing designed around the ECWCS  clothing for the military.

Troubled by wet weather? It used to be you'd wear oil skins of leather or canvas that were coated by paraffin in a petroleum solution. Then came laminated rubber cloth 'slickers'. After that, silicon treated nylons offered some protection, before the coating wore down. Then came Gore Tex, with it's laminated layers of porous fabric that breathed air and water vapor, but because of the surface tension of water droplets, kept you dry.

Malden Mills designed microfleece Polartec as a replacement for the earlier polypropylene fleeces that pilled easily and ran when snagged...

Enjoy hiking and camping? Do you remember when the backpacks available were nothing more than pocketed rucksacks, mounted on aluminum frames? The new ergonomic, body conforming styles are due to research done at the Natick Labs. As are the flexible water containers, the plastic buckles that click shut...

Down sleeping bags have been around for a long time. But, to mimic the qualities of down feathers with artificial fibers, providing washability and quick drying? That's the Natick Labs.

If a product wasn't originally developed by the Environmental Labs, it was still tested by them for durability, applicability, comfort and potential risk of detection by UV or Infra Red light.

So much of what we now wear and eat are the product of their research, that one could put the US Army Soldier Systems Center along side fashion houses like Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, or companies like Kraft & Hormel Foods in terms of impact on civilization...