P1 Group happens to share our 100th birthday with an integral component of our industry: the hard hat. One of the earliest pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE), the hard hat paved the way for the safety innovations companies like P1 Group pursue every day.
Where did the hard hat come from? The very first hard hat was inspired by the helmets worn by WWI soldiers, which protected them from the hail of bullets.
One of those soldiers was Lt. Edward Wheatley Bullard. Impressed by the effectiveness of the helmets, he invented the first commercially available industrial hard hat, called the Hard Boiled Hat®, initially designed for miners who were subjected to falling rock or tools dropped by workers higher up.