This Gas Mask Has a Rhino Horn, and Changed Everything: The Untold Story

The gas mask looks ridiculous: a snout like an elephant, glass eyes that fog, and a filter like a tin can. It also saved millions of lives. From the first poison gas attack at Ypres in 1915 to the sealed rooms of the 1991 Gulf War, this is the untold story of the strangest lifesaver ever made, including the Soviet mask with a horn on its front, the Mickey Mouse mask made for children, and the baby helmets that show just how seriously the world took the threat of poisoned air. We follow the mask from urine-soaked cloths and canvas hoods to the box respirator, the civilian masks of the Second World War, the Cold War stockpiles, and the modern panoramic masks worn by soldiers today. Along the way we meet the engineers who solved fogging, drinking, and talking through rubber, and we ask why the gas that terrorised 1915 was almost never used in the wars that followed. Told in a simple, factual documentary style, with period photographs, museum objects, and re-enactment footage, this is the history of an invention that stood between ordinary people and an invisible enemy for more than a century.