The Unusual First Ever Piece Of High-Visibility Clothing

The high-visibility jacket is a core component of the uniform for many different trades, especially ones that frequently operate at night or in the vicinity of dangerous machinery.

The vibrant fluorescent colours were first seen in Britain in the 1960s, thanks to an experiment undertaken by British Railways in Scotland. The orange “fire-fly” jackets would become so firmly connected to railway workers that even after other industries switched to yellow, the track workers stayed the same.

However, these were not the first items of hi-vis clothing ever made. In fact, the first piece of clothing that dyed with the colours we now associate with a safe working environment is particularly unusual indeed.

The creation of high-visibility fluorescent paints can be credited to Robert Switzer and his brother Joseph, collectively known as the Day-Glo Brothers.

Bob had received a scholarship from UC Berkeley in California in order to study chemistry, but his dreams of becoming a doctor ended almost as quickly as they began.

To afford to study and get his degree, he took a warehouse job at Heinz, but one day when he was loading tomatoes, tragedy struck and he cracked his skull falling from a freight car, severing his optic nerve in the process.

Forced to stay in a dark room for months until he got his sight back, Bob started to study the concept of fluorescence in order to help his brother with his magic shows. Eventually, they developed the first ever black light paints, something that has since become a vital part of flaw detection in machinery.

Bob continued to study the fluorescent colour process, wanting to develop colours that were more easily seen during the day.

Famously, his first successful pigment was used to dye his wife’s wedding dress, which technically made it the first ever piece of high-visibility clothing, eventually becoming the cornerstone of hi-vis clothing.