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A Pounding Headache: 1950
September 13, 1950. "Pendulum pounding into a plastic helmet worn for testing by Dr. Charles F. Lombard, director of the University of Southern California Department of Aviation Physiology. Testing is part of a program being worked out to improve equipment, especially headgear for football players, to cut down fatalities and injuries among gridders." Acme Newsphoto. View full size.
School of Hard Knocks
The opening paragraph from his L.A. Times obituary, November 1990: "Charles F. Lombard, who developed a revolutionary crash helmet used by test pilots, police motorcycle officers and a famous rocket-sled daredevil who helped pioneer seat belts, has died. He was 83."
The obit doesn't specify the daredevil. Maybe Joseph Kittinger? He did rocket sled experiments in the 1950s.
Thump Thump
One wonders if Dr. Lombard is getting hit from the right and left, rather like Newton's Cradle.
At least he's nicely dressed
I wonder if wearing a necktie skewed the results.
He needs an Anacin
Fights your headache three ways – it got rid of the hammer in your head, the static in your cerebellum and the cracking steel balls in your cranium.
Not what he had in mind
when they named him "Head of the Testing Department"
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