In the first days of aviation the leather helmets used in motor-racing were adopted by pilots as head protection.[2] During World War 1, British Engineers lead by Charles Edmon Prince added earphones(now called headphones) and a throat microphone to make a "hands free" communications systems for Flight Helmets - then called "aircraft telephones".[3] The Group's first product was a hand held "aircraft telephone" and over a 3 year process of experimenting with various voice microphones found the hands free throat microphone built inside a Flight Helmet much more user friendly in open-cockpit airplanes due to excessive wind noise and vibrations.