Even now, the hard hat is constantly being redesigned for protection and comfort, and though the look has changed over the years, its purpose certainly hasn’t.
The modern hard hat can trace its origins back to the battlefields of the First World War and to the mine shafts of America where protective headgear was not a requirement for workers at all. Today, the hard hat is still doing what it was made for all those years ago – ensuring the safety and protection of workers.
In 1919, businessman and inventor Edward W. Bullard returned home from World War I to his family’s business in San Francisco with an inspiration to make a safety helmet for miners. Bullard’s family business had a history of manufacturing products for mine workers, so knowing the risks miners faced working in the unregulated mine shafts, Bullard got to work on developing a hard hat for the miners’ safety.
Drawing inspiration from the design of the “doughboy” helmets that protected soldiers during the war, Bullard created the first hard hat. Bullard’s “Hard-Boiled Hat” – the hat’s first moniker given due to the process of steaming the hard leather into the helmet shape – protected mine workers for almost a decade. When the Golden Gate Bridge was being constructed in San Francisco, Bullard worked with project engineer Joseph B. Strauss to transform his mining helmet into a durable hard hat to protect workers from falling rivets that could cause serious injury.
Since its creation, the hard hat has seen many essential changes in its design. Through the decades, the hat was made of aluminum, heat-resistant fiberglass, and thermoplastics. And as the hat’s safety features evolved to offer more protection, so did the hat’s overall comfort. The 1980s saw the addition of a suspension system inside the hat for impact absorption from falling objects, as well as an adjustable knob to better fit the hat to the heads of each individual worker.
Now made of polyethylene to make them lightweight, durable, and non-conductive to electricity, the hats feature shock absorbers, brow pads, and proper ventilation to keep workers comfortable as well as protected from any type of incident. The modern hard hat is proof of the successes of the many iterations that came before it. Even now, the hard hat is constantly being redesigned for protection and comfort, and though the look has changed over the years, its purpose certainly hasn’t.