Glove
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Glove. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a covering for the hand. It is distinguished from a mitten by having a separate inclosure for each finger. If we may credit Zenophon, the writer of the Anabasis, the Greeks appear to have sneered at the Persian soldiers for wearing gloves to keep their hands warm. However much the ancients may have scorned to cover their hands in the days of simplicity, it is known that gloves were worn in the later days of the Roman Empire. Richly embroidered gloves were a fashionable article of attire among gallants in the day when Walter Raleigh spread his rich cloak over the mud for Queen Elizabeth to walk on. A mailed glove formed of interwoven steel links was a part of the knight's armor. To fling a glove at the feet of another was a challenge to mortal combat. To send a mailed gauntlet to a court or camp was a declaration of war. Modern glovemaking is an important industry. In the world of trade knit gloves, whether of cotton, silk, or other fiber, are classed with hosiery. Glovemaking from woven or felted cloth, cut by pattern and afterward stitched together, is a separate branch of industry. Driving gloves and sportsmen's gloves are made of horsehide, buckskin, pigskin; also kid and calf, or any pliable, durable leather. Kid gloves are supposed to be made from the skins of young goats, but, as a matter of fact, the cheaper grades are made of sheepskin shaved thin. Most of the leather used in heavy gloves is oil tanned. The tanning of kid leather is an art in itself. The hair and fat are loosened by a bath in lime water. Scraping and fermentation in bran mash give a clean skin ready for tanning. Tanning is accomplished with alum; while softness and delicacy and elasticity are secured by treatment in a custard of eggs, flour, and salt. Kid leather is finished in two styles, the dressed and the undressed or suede. To produce the former, the hair side is smoothed, dyed, and polished. In making undressed kid, the flesh side of the skin is shaved, dyed, and given a soft, velvet finish by buffing on an emery wheel. Two kid skins supply sufficient material for three pairs of gloves. Germany leads in the manufacture of thread gloves. Paris is the center of the kid glove industry. Brussels and Copenhagen are important centers. Worcester, England, is noted for the manufacture of dogskin gloves, made, however, from a variety of skins. In Austria 2,400,000,000 pairs of gloves are made annually. Glovemaking in America was established shortly before the Revolutionary War. Some Scotch glovemaking families were colonized in Fulton County, New York , by Sir William Johnson, the great manager of the Mohawk Indians. They called their village Perth, and began at once the making of heavy buckskin and other gloves for farmers and frontiersmen. Thread, needles, and patterns they brought with them. From this small beginning a large industry grew up in Perth and vicinity. In 1825 a lumber wagon laden with gloves was dispatched to the Boston market, making the trip in less than two months,--a notable event in the trade. At the present time about 400 institutions in the United States make gloves. One hundred and sixty-six of these are in Fulton County, at Gloversville, Johnstown, and other cities in the vicinity of Perth where the business began. In 1900 Fulton County produced nearly $10,000,000 worth of gloves out of a total of $17,048,-658 for the entire nation. The leather is laid out smooth in piles and is cut with curved chisels called dies. Fronts, rears, gussets, and thumbs are cut in quantities and sent out to thousands of glovemakers' homes to be sewed. Only the high priced gloves are sewed in factories. Instead of huge factories, the glovemakers' streets are lined with small comfortable homes, a-clatter with the rattle of sewing machines. The finished glove is shaped by slipping it on a hollow brass hand heated within by steam. Mates are tacked together and put up in paper bands for market, a dozen pairs in a package. See Goat ; Leather ; Tanning
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
an article of dress; a covering for the hand. Its use reaches back to a remote antiquity, for we are told in the Odyssey that Laertes, the farmer-king, gloves to protect his hands from the wore thorns. Xenophon on also sneers at the Persians for wearing gloves for keeping In their more robust their hands warm. days the Greeks and Romans scorned the use of gloves; but in later times they were used in Rome. The glove appears to have become a well-known article of dress in England about the 14th century, and corporations of glovers were in existence in the 15th century. Modern gloves are of two distinct classes, woven and knitted gloves, and those made of leather; and the making of these constitute entirely separate branches of manufacture. The manufacture of knitted or woven gloves is an industry allied to the hosiery trade, and the materials comprise all the ordinary fibers, the most important being silk and wool. In some cases these gloves are entirely made and finished by knitting; but in others the pieces are separately fashioned and sewed together as in making leather gloves. The manufacture is widespread, but the headquarters of the thread and cloth glove trade are now Berlin and Saxony. The materials used for making lea leather gloves is principally the skins of deer, sheep and lambs, goats and kids, the latter being the most important, though far more "kid" gloves are made of sheep than of kid leather. The skins for military and other heavy gloves-doe or buck leather-are prepared by the ordinary process of tanning. Kid gloves are of two principal kinds, glacé and suède, according to the manner of dressing and finishing the leather used. Glacé gloves are those which are dressed, dyed, and polished on the hair or outer side of the skin, while suède gloves are carefully pared, smoothed, and d dyed on the inner side of the skin for their purpose, and thus have the appearance of fine chamois. Paris and Grenoble are the chief seats of the French kid glove trade. Military gloves are made at Niort and Vendôme. Brussels and Copenhagen are also important glove-making centers. In England, Worcester is the principal seat of the glove industry; industry; and in a specialty, the so-called English dogskin gloves made from the skins of Cape sheep, the English manufacturers are without rivals. In feudal times the challenge to single combat was given by the casting down of the glove; and an ancient and more ceremonial still observed conpleasing ceren sists in the presentation of white gloves to a judge presiding over an assize which no cases come up for trial