For the record, please let me comment on one item in Garth's list. <snip> GARTH 6) early 80's invention of the polystyrene helmet to take the place of the hairnet. (probably saved a few lives - perhaps my own too) HARVEY I'm almost certain that the first modern helmet was the MSR; I passed around a (too small for me) prototype among the racing kids in 1973 or 1974, and I think it was on the market by 1975. Ok, it used a hard-hat type suspension, not polystyrene, but the (poly) Bailen (Australia or New Zealand) and the Bell Biker were on the market rather quickly afterwards.
I cherish my small helmet collection with an MSR, a Bailen, a Bell Biker, and a couple of others I've received as gifts from CR friends. I even have a bad-idea Skid-Lid, complete with a chicken feature or two from the years it was stored in a barn. The last edition of the old LAW magazine in the early 1980s before they changed the magazine name had a picture of our son and some of his buddies on the cover. All in kid-size Bailen helmets. Bailen gave him a new helmet (he was about 6) for rights to the use the picture in ads, which they did.
So, we have factually (?) established that early "hard-shells" are On Topic!
For all you would ever want to know about helmets, I recommend http://www.bhsi.org.
harvey sachs
mcLean va.