Zensee
Posts: 1564
Joined: 9/4/2004
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Geez! Ya lazy bums! And I don't even watch footbnal anymore.
http://www.riddell.com/history.htm
EXCERPT: "The nose protector was the forerunner of the face mask. Nose protector helmets were found during the transition to face masks. The manufacturers began making them as early as 1927: that was the first year one appeared in the Spalding Guide. A molded piece of leather with holes for the eyes and mouth covered the entire face. It looked like a ski mask or the visor of a knight errant. Without a doubt, it was the most bizarre-looking piece of football apparel ever made. The dearth of photographs of anyone wearing one of them bears out their confirmed lack of acceptance, probably because they were unbearably hot.
The first person to devise a bar face mask on a football helmet was Vern McMillan, the owner of a sporting goods store in Terre Haute, Indiana. It was a rubber-covered wire mask on a leather helmet. Such masks were used in the mid-1930s. There is a face mask on the helmet of a New York Giants player in a photo in a 1937 issue of SPORT.
The superior rigidity of the plastic helmet made the universality of the face mask possible. The hole drilled for the bolt holding the mask would not expand the way it would if it was drilled through leather. And the sides of the plastic helmet would not collapse, driving the nut into the wearer's face.
As use of the plastic helmet spread, so did makeshift face masks. Linemen needed them more than backs, and began crafting odd cages of leather-and tape-covered wire. When Joe Perry of the San Francisco 49ers suffered a broken jaw in 1954, he wore a face mask manufactured of clear lucite plastic. Lucite, however, frequently shattered and it was banned. The breakthrough in face masks came in 1955. G.E. Morgan, a consultant to Riddell, and Paul Brown, coach of the Cleveland Browns, invented the BT-5 face mask for quarterback Otto Graham, who was dominating pro football and against whom pass rushers sometimes led with the elbow. The "BT" in the invention's name was for bar tubular; it was a single tubular bar that was a combination of rubber and plastic. Graham wore it one year and retired from pro football."
Here's some great helmets - check out the executioner style one about half way down the page. Kinky!
http://www.pasttimesports.biz/football.html
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