Basic gear from mid-twentieth-century Brazil

[David Wilson]

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Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest and easternmost country in South America and Latin America. It is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the seventh largest by population, with over 203 million people. Brazil is a federation composed of 26 states and a Federal District, which hosts the capital, Brasília. Its most populous city is São Paulo, followed by Rio de Janeiro. Brazil has the most Portuguese speakers in the world and is the only country in the Americas where Portuguese is an official language. It is among the world's most multicultural and ethnically diverse nations, due to over a century of mass immigration from around the world. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 kilometers (4,655 mi). Covering roughly half of South America's land area, it borders all other countries and territories on the continent except Ecuador and Chile.

I managed to track down the following five Brazilian diving equipment manufacturers:

• Atlântida
• Cobra Sub S.A. Equipamentos Submarinos. Estrada do Engenho D’agua 1200 · Rio de Janeiro - RJ 22765-240 · Brazil
• Fun Dive
• Menrod do Brasil
• Indústria de Equipamento de Caça Submarina Orca Ltda. Rua Edmundo Pereira 242 · Engenho Da Rainha · Rio de Janeiro · Rio de Janeiro · Brazil

Some have vanished without ttace, while others have survived to the present day. We shall take them in alphabetical order.

 

[David Wilson]

During the 1950s, Brazil's diving industry began to emerge, with Atlântida, Menrod do Brasil and Orca pioneering the trend. With the help of the media, recreational diving accrued greater and greater national interest.

Little information is forthcoming online about the Brazilian diving equipment manufacturer Atlântida. I managed to find one example of the company's output: a pair of swimming fins. Otherwise, the company appears to have disappeared some time in the last century.

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So adjustable open-heel fins with open toed foot pockets and blades with multiple ribs for reinforcement. Extended heel plates protect the feet on rocky shores. The message embossed on the fiit pockets identifies these fins as military in type.

At the weekend, we shall move on to Cobra sub, which still operates as a manufacturer of diving equipment.