Ancient exercise contraptions and their well-dressed users

Another great gallery from How To Be A Retronaut (which is fast becoming one of my favorite sites on the net): a gallery of extraordinary vintage exercise machines. The best part of these images are the "athletic wear" enjoyed by their users -- skirts and petticoats, three-piece suits, watch-chains, and shiny leather shoes.

Vintage Exercise Machines

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facetedjewel

Thank gawd for shorts and T-shirts…and showers…washers and dryers…electric razors…modern dentistry…oh, nevermind. It’s hot outside but it’s good to alive in 2011.
- facetedjewel
  
  ‘good to *be* alive’
  
  ‘Damn your eyes!’
  ‘Too late!’
  -Young Dr. Frankenstein
- dainel
  
  It’s a well known fact that that shorts and t-shirts did not exist at that time. What is less well known, is that they did not wear anything at all when they exercise. This is why the genders were segregated. But of course you do not have your picture taken like that. So you dress up.
lorin

They all seem to be postural rather than exercises – perhaps to correct curvature of spine, etc. Apart from the one that seems to be to practice riding side-saddle.
facetedjewel

They worked out balls akimbo? One might think they would at least wear long undies for safety’s sake, lest little fella get crunched.
Chevan

I very much doubt those fancy clothes would actually have been used as athletic wear back when these machines were used.

I think it’s much more likely they just wore those clothes for the pictures. Modesty and all that.
Anonymous

There was a cabinet magazine article about this a few years ago.

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/29/pena.php