HISTORY - THE BRA

What do I look like, an encyclopedia? If you really want to know about Cretan breast binding and Catherine de Medici try this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_brassieres

Here at the Jenette Bras Department of Historical Research we are exclusively focused on the history of one single truth, which we hold to be self-evident: modern bras are an achievement of huge proportions. This seems to have become clear around the middle of the twentieth century. In the January, 1959 issue of CAPER, a second-string men’s magazine, we find this:

“Says Henry Plehn, president of Peter Pan brassieres and one of the best silhouette engineers in the business, ‘More engineering time, skill, and effort goes into a brassiere than into a major steel and concrete bridge because of the unique stresses and strains involved.’ …Among the sections to be harmoniously united: cups, stitching, hooks, eyes, wires, straps, gores, bones, bands, trimming and lining. Among the structural materials: cotton, nylon, silk, plush, batiste, rubber, plastic, iron and steel.”
            --Ted M. Levine, The Solid Gold Bust

Back up for Mr. Plehn’s bra-bridge comparison was not long in coming. In his article BRASSIERES: An Engineering Miracle (Science and Mechanics, February, 1964), Edward Nanas writes:

In many respects, the challenge of enclosing and supporting a semi-solid mass of variable volume and shape…involves a design effort comparable to that of building a bridge or a cantilevered skyscraper.

Bra designers must solve the problem of providing an uplift against vertical (downward) and sometimes tangential forces. They have borrowed from the design of suspension bridges, supplying vertical supports of wire or bone that are similar to a bridge's piers. Wire cages for the cups duplicate wire ropes supporting the bridge's roadway.

The structural members act much like shoring timbers used in coal mines except that the retaining member is angled down and in against the rib cage rather than out and away. Because they are secured at both top and bottom of the cup, they act as segments of a retaining wall.

Mr. Nanas concludes:

“The object of the designer then is to keep the bosom at a pleasing equilibrium in the face of gravity.”

You got that right, pal.