Hard hat inventor posthumously honored; fifth-generation of his family runs KY business
Edward W. Bullard, who remembered the steel helmet he wore as a soldier in World War I and went on to create the first hard hat for miners, has been posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Bullard, the company founded by Edward W. Bullard’s father in California, is now based in Cynthiana and still manufactures hard hats, along with face and respiratory protection, fire helmets and thermal imaging cameras.
After serving in France during WWI, Bullard came back home and went to work in the family business, which sold equipment for miners. Inspired by the design of his Army-issued helmet, he set about to create the first commercially-available head protection for miners in 1919.
To make his first Hard-Boiled Hat, Bullard glued pieces of canvas together, steamed it, covered it in shellac and added leather brims to the front and back, according to his hall of fame bio. The hats were used by workers constructing the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam, according to the company.
Edward W. Bullard was one of 11 “historical inductees” into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, a group that also included auto inventor Carl Benz and the developers of ibuprofen, pharmacologist Stewart Adams and chemist John Nicholson.
The organization said this year’s group of inductees included people selected in 2020 and 2021, since the COVID-19 pandemic prevented celebrations in previous years.
Among the living inductees honored at the induction ceremony were NASA engineer and Super Soaker inventor Lonnie Johnson and Marian Croak, developer of voice over internet protocol, or VoIP, technology.
Bullard CEO Wells Bullard, who is Edward W. Bullard’s great-granddaughter and the fifth generation of the family to lead the company, said that though she never got to meet him, her great-grandfather was known as “a really fun, creative, passionate guy” who recognized the hazards miners faced and wanted to help protect them.
She said a group of employees working on celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the hard hat’s development in 2019 came up with the idea of nominating Edward W. Bullard for the hall of fame.
How Bullard’s company found a home in Kentucky
Bullard, the company, was founded in California in 1898 by Edward W. Bullard’s father, Edward Dickinson Bullard, who sold mining equipment for use in gold and copper mines.
After the hard hat was introduced, the company began to focus on manufacturing safety equipment and continued to refine and expand its products. But in the early 1970s, a West Coast location wasn’t working well.
OSHA had required protective equipment for workers, and “all of a sudden, we were super busy with orders,” Wells Bullard said.
But the company was paying too much in freight costs, and customers were frustrated by lengthy delivery times.
Wells Bullard said the company sent an executive on a tour to find a new manufacturing location in the eastern United States, and the story goes that the trip was unsuccessful until he heard of a sewing plant that had recently gone out of business in Cynthiana. An empty building and a workforce were waiting.
“We’re so fortunate in so many ways,” Wells Bullard said. “We have the best people. We have smart and kind, really open-minded people. They get that what we do really matters, that we’re protecting workers around the world.”
Bullard has 310 employees around the world, including 260 in Central Kentucky. This year, the company is celebrating 50 years in Cynthiana.
And just like her great-grandfather saw a need for miners and responded to it, the company’s focus is still on “solving problems for people at work,” Wells Bullard said. “Millions of people around the world depend on us to keep them safe.”
Wells Bullard said the company tries to listen to its customers, watching how people work and responding to problems they need solved.
For instance, she said the company didn’t have much reach in the healthcare industry before the pandemic, but when the pandemic hit, they developed a powered respirator for health care workers.
“We’re growing our customer reach,” she said.
She said she was “raised to be very proud of what the company did,” but she was “neither entitled, nor expected to work at Bullard.”
Now, she’s hoping to lead the company successfully into its sixth generation as an independent, family-owned business.
“I feel very, very very fortunate that this is what my family built,” she said.
This story was originally published May 13, 2022 at 6:59 AM.
