 In the First World War, the French army formed a camouflage corps, led by Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola, employing artists known as camoufleurs to create schemes such as tree observation posts and covers for guns. Other armies soon followed them. The term camouflage probably comes from camoufler, a Parisian slang term meaning to disguise, and may have been influenced by camouflet, a French term meaning smoke blown in someone's face. The English zoologist John Graham Kerr, artist Solomon J. Solomon and the American artist Abbott Thayer led attempts to introduce scientific principles of countershading and disruptive patterning into military camouflage, with limited success.
