The Invention (and Demonstration) of the First Football Helmet, 1932

British Pathe con­tin­ues to dust off and dig­i­tize some amaz­ing clips from its archive. First came The World’s First Mobile Phone (1922) and footage of The King’s Speech in 1938 — you know, the real King George VI work­ing his way through a pub­lic speech in Scot­land. Now British Pathe returns with some 1932 footage of an inven­tor show­ing off the first foot­ball hel­met, his mod­est “attempt to pre­vent fatal injuries” in the sport. You won’t want to miss the demo of this new fan­gled piece of sports equip­ment. H/T Devour

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!