I have always wondered whether the invisible man was supposed to cause his clothing to be invisible or if he was only invisible when he was naked. Going on the premise that the invisible man could cause his clothing to disappear there needs to be some plausible explanation like how Peter Parker was turned into Spiderman after he was bitten by a radio-active spider.

At tonight's improv show I learned a plausible reason for how the clothes might disappear. Here it is. The clothing was made invisible by a secretion of sweat that causes things to become invisible. When the sweat comes in contact with a surface even in gaseous form that surface is rendered invisible. The implications of this are interesting because if you were to know of the existence of this sweat it would be the equivalent of an invisible paint that could be placed on any surface to make it invisible as well, until the sweat evaporated.