Leather flying helmet

[1] With the rise of motorsport and aviation at the start of the 1900s, leather was becoming a popular choice for protective gear from the cold and the engine noise.

[2] It has many advantages that made it the ideal material for flying helmets: It is warm, durable, impermeable to liquids including water, flexible, and can be cut to curve around the head.

[2] British engineers led by Charles Edmond Prince added throat microphones and earphones into these helmets during World War I for hands-free communications in the noisy and windy environment of aircraft cockpits.

[3][4] With the advent of closed-cockpit airplanes, head protection became less necessary (Charles Lindbergh still wore a leather helmet when he crossed the Atlantic in 1927, though his Spirit of St. Louis monoplane had a closed cockpit).

[5][6] See illustration above of a Type B flying helmet that belonged to Spitfire delivery pilot Helen Kerly, now in the Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum.