A little lesson in Hard Hat History. Enjoy!!! The steel helmet Edward Bullard brought home from World War I was more than a souvenir. His doughboy headgear was the inspiration for a revolution in industrial safety. For 20 years, Bullards father had been selling equipment to gold and copper miners. The miners, who wore hats similar to modern baseball caps with shellacked hard-leather brims, needed more protection from falling objects. In 1919, Bullard patented a hard-boiled hat that was made by using steam to impregnate canvas with resin, gluing several layers together, and vamishing the molded shape. That same year, the United States Navy asked the Bullard Company to develop some sort of head protection for shipyard workers, and hard hat usage began to spread. Bullard soon developed an internal suspension system to make the hard-boiled hat more effective. In 1933, construction began on San Franciscos Golden Gate Bridge. The projects chief engineer, Joseph Strauss, was committed to making the workplace as safe as possible. He installed safety nets, an innovation that saved 19 lives on the project. And he became the first supervisor to require workers to wear hard hats. Cooperating with Strauss to meet workplace needs, Bullard designed a special hard hat for sandblasters to use; it covered their faces, provided a window for vision, and used a pumping system to bring fresh air into the enclosure. Aluminum hard hats were introduced in 1938, providing improved durability with lighter weight, although they could not be used where electrical insulation was important. During the 1940s, fiberglass became popular for hard hats, only to be largely replaced by thermoplastics (plastics that become soft and easy to shape when heated) a decade later. A change in ANSI testing procedures in 1997 opened the door to development of a hard hat with ventilation holes to keep the wearers head cooler. The first ventilated hats were produced in the United States the following year. During the late 1990s, manufacturers sought to make hard hats more attractive by decorating them with sports team logos. One company even produced an ANSI-approved model shaped like a cowboy hat. Accessories for hard hats are becoming more sophisticated. Common accessories include transparent face shields, sun visors, sound-muffling ear covers, and perspiration-absorbing cloth liners. Recent innovations have taken a high-tech tum, introducing such attachments as pagers, AM-FM radios, and walkie-talkies. A digital package introduced in 1997 links a hat-top camcorder camera to a handheld computer, and provides a visor-mounted viewing screen. Be safe!
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 13:42:53 +0000