Cleat (shoe)

Cleats or studs are protrusions on the sole of a shoe, or on an external attachment to a shoe, that provide additional traction on a soft or slippery surface. In American English the term cleats is used synecdochically to refer to shoes featuring such protrusions. Similarly, in British English the term 'studs' can be used to refer to 'football boots' or 'rugby boots', for instance, in a similar manner to the way 'spikes' is often used to refer to athletics shoes.

Athletes have worn cleats since at least the 1500s. Although there are no images or surviving examples of cleats from that time period, the first written documentation of cleats comes from 1526, when "football boots" were listed in King Henry VIII's Great Wardrobe. According to researchers, the English monarch ordered the royal cordwainer (shoemaker), Cornelius Johnson, to make him a pair of hand-stitched boots "to play football". The shoes cost four shillings (about $200 today) and were probably made of especially strong leather.

Football remained a popular sport in England throughout the ensuing centuries, but it wasn’t until the emergence of The Football Association in 1863 that the sport of football emerged as an actual organized game in England. With this, the sport took off in popularity, and understandably a demand for equipment began to emerge to ensure player safety and comfort. More importantly, technological innovations during this time period played a key role in new methods and materials used for production of cleats. In the 1840s, a method of hardening rubber and stopping it from decaying, called vulcanization, was developed in both England and the United States. Vulcanized rubber is used in the production of all types of shoes, but is especially beneficial in the production of cleats, in that one of the primary purposes of football cleats is to protect the player's feet. Technology continued to improve in the coming decades, and by the 1890s studs are first used to make football cleats. The concept of spiked and studded shoes for other sports began to emerge as well in the late 19th century. In the 1890s, a British Company (now known as Reebok), developed the earliest known spiked leather running shoes.

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