Only the climbing related sections of the 1959 Thomas Black & Sons equipment catalog showing the selection of equipment available to British climbers at the time. The whole catalog is eighty-four pages long covering camping, skiing, hiking, and many related outdoor items.
Pitons, Hobnails, wooden ice axes, and both nylon and hemp ropes, canvas jackets, and net base layers offer a nice snapshot of what mountaineers had to work with in 1959. Climbing equipment and outdoor gear took a leap forward in the coming years with new materials and manufacturing technology putting state of the art equipment into the hands of a motivated generation of climbers.
Thomas Black & Sons is still in business today and is known simply as Blacks sporting goods.