Basic gear from mid-twentieth-century France

[dmaziuk]

Not even for eggbeater drills: they bend ze neez but still it's the foot rotation that does the job. Rather than straight push as our patent holders ass-u-me-d.

 

[Popgun Pete]

I wonder where they all got to as you don't make an injection mold and do a run of only a few pairs, maybe a couple of hundred at least would have been produced to be sent around as samples.

 

[dmaziuk]

I used to work for archaeologists, when they find something that nobody can imagine what it could possibly be for, they call it "religious paraphernalia". Picture a future archaelogist excavating a lost warehouse full of these things and trying to figure out what sort of religious ceremony would involve wearing them.

 

[Popgun Pete]

I used to work for archaeologists, when they find something that nobody can imagine what it could possibly be for, they call it "religious paraphernalia". Picture a future archaelogist excavating a lost warehouse full of these things and trying to figure out what sort of religious ceremony would involve wearing them.

I think the name NA'JET and the verb "nager" would be a complete give-away, however I suspect it is likely that there are a large number of pairs sitting forgotten in cupboards after their owners decided that they were not what they had hoped for. Considering their age they look brand new as the stuff they are made from has not degraded or oxidised.

 

[David Wilson]

I've just chanced upon the image above on Luigi Fabbri's excellent site at na'jet breaststroke | BluTimeScubaHistory. This page identifies the Na'jets as breast-stroke fins made of plastic and launched in 1973. The pair pictured above comes from Giuliano Miniati's collection of historical diving gear. According to Contributions | BluTimeScubaHistory, "Giuliano Miniati for a long time, was the technical point of reference for divers in the Florence and Tuscany areas. From his historical collection very beautiful pieces appeared, envied by any collector." So Pete is far from alone when he conserves Na'jets for posterity!

 

[Popgun Pete]

Nice to see another pair which look equally unused. I remember about that time I saw a pair of full foot dive fins that were made of similar stuff and thought at the time who would want to wear plastic fins? They had a slight perfumed smell to them that was definitely not rubber, were rather basic in their shape and were of Asian origin from memory. Again a sample pair, this time seen in a rural seaside town's sports store, they were black as the Ace of Spades and I never saw another pair. Unlike cheap vinyl fins for kids they were actually adult flippers and may have been the first plastic fins for diving. Have not thought of them until I dragged the NA'JET fins out of their storage box.

 

[Popgun Pete]

Recently looking through some old dive books I found this Beuchat brochure tucked away in one of them. I remember that it was in the approach to Christmas that I was in the Myer Lonsdale Street store which had a sporting department on the ground floor right near the entrance. In 1970 this was one of the few places that you could buy diving gear, in fact it was a drop off point for scuba cylinders being filled if you were in the know. From memory they were Porpoise units with a black and white check pattern on the top, actually the bottom as the cylinders were worn inverted, being in pairs. The GSD spearguns, the Dynamic, had just arrived and while drooling over them I was on the hunt for my second pair of Jetfins, this time the open heel model. To my pleasure on the glass top store counter, which was usually manned by a very pretty blonde, there were some Beuchat brochures, so I picked one up and here it is 53 years later. Printed back to back and folded like a concertina it contained a lot of info on the season’s gear and this was my wish list for a number of years, the leggy models shown also had their own attraction!

 

[David Wilson]

Great memories, Pete. I managed to get hold of a French-language Beuchat catalogue in the same format as yours during the late 1960s when I joined a university branch of the British Sub Aqua Club. I have posted it at Beuchat-1960s.