From straw and bramble to Kevlar, helmets kept reinventing themselves
Some eighteenth-century British gamekeepers protected their heads with straw bound together by cut bramble. Their successors wear aramid fibre, and so do soldiers. In between came bronze, iron, leather, cork and plastic, and the helmet spread from the battlefield to building sites, racetracks and even Catalan human towers.
The word comes from helm, Old English for a protective head covering. Most early helmets were military, though some were more for show than combat. Antiquity produced two influential designs, the Greek Corinthian helmet and the Roman galea. Medieval armourers, working almost entirely in metal, developed designs such as the bascinet, the armet, the great helm and the frog-mouth helm. Because coats of arms began as a way to recognise armoured nobles in battle or tournaments, the helmet, one of a knight's most visible pieces, became a staple of heraldry. The great seal of Owain Glyndwr shows the Welsh prince and his horse both wearing headgear crowned with his golden dragon, surely ceremonial rather than practical.
The nineteenth century brought new materials. Europeans in the tropics adopted the pith helmet, made of pith or cork, and Germany the spiked leather pickelhaube. Early aviators, tank crews, motorists and footballers all wore leather. In the Second World War German pilots reportedly hid their leather flying helmets under berets before swapping both for cloth caps.
The world wars also revived steel. France developed the Adrian helmet, Britain the Brodie and Germany the Stahlhelm, and workplace hard hats may have taken inspiration from them. The twentieth century then produced an explosion of specialised designs for flying, batting, hockey, cycling, skiing and racing, and since the 1990s most helmets have been moulded resin or plastic, often reinforced with aramid fibres such as Kevlar and Twaron. Modern military examples include the American PASGT, which troops simply called the Kevlar, and the French SPECTRA.
Specialisation keeps going. Racing drivers wear head and neck supports that tether helmet to body in severe crashes. In the early twenty-first century, the children who climb to the top three levels of Catalonia's castells, or human towers, began wearing helmets with soft outer shells so they would not hurt anyone below if they fell.
Source: Helmet
