Invention of hard hats at Hoover Dam a myth - Carson Times, NV
The Bullard Company asserts that the first official "Hard Hat Area" was the Golden Gate Bridge project in San Francisco. The project's chief engineer, Joseph B. Strauss, beginning on Jan. 5, 1933, directed all the workers to wear hard hats to protect themselves from falling rivets and other materials.
However, the Six Companies constructing Hoover Dam first required all its workers to wear hard hats by November 1931. The Las Vegas Review-Journal in its Oct. 28, 1931, issue wrote, "Nobody will be allowed in the canyon bottom without one of the helmets, henceforth, according to Ed Brockman, supervisor of insurance and safety for the Big Six." The story continued, "And Six Companies is paying the bill. A helmet for every man! And more than fifty dozen already have been issued. Others are en route from the factory, enough to protect the craniums of the army in its entirety."