history of rebreather project???

[babar]

incidentally, one of the first rebreathers was built by a guy named Chris Lambertson, he named it the FLATUS 1. It's an acronym of some sort, but funny as hell.

Babar

 

[gfisher4792]

Um, while Cousteau did a lot for SCUBA, and is credited with invinting the on-demand regulator for open-circuit SCUBA, I don't recall he did much with rebreathers.

I remember reading something recently that speculated that if Cousteau didn't have a bad experience with a rebreather dive, rebreathers may have become the standard kit, rather than the rare exception.

 

[madmole]

You should come to the UK then, its OC thats becoming the exception now, RBs should hit 15% of all dives some time this year. Cant escape the yellow perils everywhere

 

[Mako Mark]

Then in 1878 Englishman Henry Fluess was......................

His patent was brought by Siebe, Gorman & Co and in November 1880 his unit was used to repair a sluice door in the flooded Severn Tunnel workings.

I believe that he actually completed over 1000' penetration in order to close the valve, which is pretty impressive as they hadnt invented underwater candles at that time.

The reason they had to go with rebreather technology was becaust the tank metal technology wasnt good enough to take enough gas for open circuit. they could only manage to get a 20 cubic foot copper tank to 500 psi, so to be able to make any kind of dive, they had to use O2 or Nitrox rebreathers.

 

[GrierHPharmD]

The Historical Diving Society has lots of info on early diving and equipment evolution:
http://hds.org/index.html

I'm reading Cousteau's The Silent World now (just re-released by National Geographic Press), and he mentions using CO2 scrubbers in the 30s, but his claim to fame (with Gagnon and Taillez) was the development of the "demand valve", or regulator, which, together with a compressed air tank, he called an "aqualung device", which later evolved to "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", or SCUBA.

Another good resource, available at most decent book stores, is a book called Neutral Bouyancy: Adventures in a Liquid World. It has a nice discussion of the evolution of diving.

Good luck,
Grier