Basic gear from mid-twentieth-century Italy: Mares and Pirelli

[David Wilson]

1966

No change, except for colour: azzurro (light blue).

1967

Ditto.

1968

Ditto again.

 

[David Wilson]

By the 1970s, Pirelli was beginning to rationalise its underwater range and deploying its "Ulixes" brand to do so. In 1974, however, the Eolo was still in production:

There it is at No. 12. And here are the product descriptions:

The caption reads in Italian: "Eolo. 12) Di plastica, con cinghiolo di gomma. Colore azzurro. Per ragazzi. Imballo di spedizione: scatole da 20 pezzi." (Eolo. 12) Plastic, with rubber strap. Light blue colour. Shipping packaging: boxes containing 20 pieces.)

That's it for today. I'll be back at the weekend with a review of Pirelli Glauco diving goggles. Christmas Eve tomorrow, so let me take this opportunity to wish everybody what we call in the UK "the compliments of the season". This festive season is likely to be very different from most others in the recent past, but my thoughts will be, as always, be focused on those who are lonely, sick, persecuted or destitute at this time of the year or who have lost anyone dear to them, whether a friend, relative, colleague or acquaintance. I lost my own dearest friend close to the beginning of this year before the COVID-19 outbreak took hold and I still mourn her death. So stay well, keep safe.

 

[David Wilson]

Thanks for the likes, Sam and АлександрД, and the compliments of the season to you all.

Today's object is the Pirelli Glauco goggle. The product name "Glauco" appears to refer to the item's colour as the word is Italian for "glaucous", meaning "of a pale green colour with a bluish-grey tinge". Judge for yourself from its début image in the 1959 catalogue:

The caption on the next page simply reads "per nuoto", "for swimming", reminding the user that goggles were designed for surface use, perhaps for observation of sealife including a few very shallow dives, but not for diving to depths where the pressure on the eyes could not be relieved by nostril-pinching, nose-blowing and ear-clearing because the nose remained outside in this case. By the late 1950s, goggles had indeed earned something of a bad reputation within the diving community, stoked by images of the bloodshot eyes of underwater hunters who had ventured too deep with their goggles while chaing their prey. This said, I am saddened that the "Glauco" style of swimming goggles gradually vanished from the market and that replacements came in the form of the small hard plastic goggles so ubiquitous today. I recent acquired a pair of early-1950s Typhoon googles via eBay and the rubber skirt is unbelievably soft around and over the eye sockets compared with today's counterparts:

Progress in fashion and technology does not always coincide with progress in comfort!

But I digress. Here are the goggles in 1960:

We're back in monochrome again for some reason. The opening paragraph on the left-hand page suggests that they may also have been available in green, dark-blue and black, while stocks lasted. Pirelli deemed all the models pictured to be suitable for observation, underwater hunting and swimming. We live in doctrinaire, overspecialised times when it comes to equipment for swimming on and beneath the waves.

1963

No change in pricing, 750 lire, but a reminder that the "Glauco" is a "binocular" device with twin viewing windows, because back then the Italian term "occhiali" covered spectacles, swimming goggles and (diving) masks. Language changes, and we change with it...

 

[David Wilson]

1965

A price hike of 50 lire for the second half of the 1960s, but otherwise no change in a tried and tested design.

1966

Ditto

1967

No change there.

1974

Still there in 1974, No. 11, fourth row, middle column. The Italian caption translates roughly to: "Glauco 11) Rubber, binocular vision for swimming. Light-blue colour. Shipping packaging: boxes containing 20 pieces.)"

So the Glauco has done very well to have stayed a minimum of fifteen years in production. Next time, mid-week, we'll begin with a trio of masks making their début in 1961: Tritone, Minimo, Narvalo. Having already prematurely "covered" the Tritone in previous postings, we'll focus first on the Pirelli Minimo.

In the meantime, stay well and safe. I contracted a mouth infection over Christmas, which meant a change of diet to soup and soft fruit, but I am now fully "on the mend" with the bonus of some welcome weight loss! Let's look forward to the arrival of New Year's Eve, celebrated even more than Christmas Eve by my Scottish forebears and enabling us all to hope for better times in 2021.

 

[jale]

your mouth infection is due to all the "tubas" you are trying
Take care and condolences for your friend

 

[Angelo Farina]

The name Glauco does not simply refers to the colour.
As many other Pirelli products, they used names of the Greek mitology. Glauco was son of Poseidon. Here his history: The mythological legend of Glauco, the fisherman who became Triton

 

[David Wilson]

Thank you so much, Angelo, for your feedback about the product name and the link telling the story of "Glauco". My initial instinct told me that there must be more to the name of these goggles than their colour, but I admit I didn't dig deep enough this morning. I see that there is a Wikipedia article about "Glaucus", the name of the mythological character in Latin and English: "In Greek mythology, Glaucus (Ancient Greek: Γλαῦκος, Glaûkos meaning "glimmering") was a Greek prophetic sea-god, born mortal and turned immortal upon eating a magical herb. It was believed that he came to the rescue of sailors and fishermen in storms, having earlier earned a living from the sea himself." Perhaps the original meaning of "glimmering" appealed to the product developers at Pirelli as they had designed a pair of goggles enabling underwater vision. Glaucus appears below with the sea-nymph Scylla in a picture painted by Bartholomeus Spranger:

 

[David Wilson]

Thanks to all for the likes and feedback.

The Pirelli Minimo is the mask of the day. As you may have guessed, "minimo" means "minimum, smallest, least", identifying the model's low volume as its distinctive feature. Here it is at its 1961 début:

Bottom right in the image above.

1963

This page brings greater clarity via the image and the product description ("MINIMO (m.r.). Con ghiera metallica a facciale trapezoidale in plexiglass. Consente un'ampia visibilità et riduce al minimo lo spazio morto." ["MINIMO (Registered Trademark). Fitted with metal band with trapezoidal plexiglass faceplate. It allows wide visibility and reduces dead space to a minimum."])

Perhaps surprisingly, the nose-shaped projection in the mask lens is never even mentioned in this product description, although its presence contributes to the reduction of "dead space to the minimum". The nosepiece is there to placate the Cyrano de Bergeracs in the diving community who complained about their nostrils being squeezed against the glass when they donned their masks.

The Minimo's nose receptacle within the lens is not unique. In the UK, E. T. Skinner's Typhoon catalogue offered their Surf Star mask back in 1956:

The model's "proboscis" is called a "nose recess" and it comes with the same selling points as its Italian counterpart, namely a wide field of vision and a low internal volume.

I even managed to locate one Soviet (Kazakhstan) mask with the same feature:

Read more about the above at Soviet masks: Russian models.

I haven't been able to locate an image of anybody actually wearing any of these masks and I wonder how comfortable the presumably hard "nose recess" was in practice on sensitive nostrils.

 

[David Wilson]

The name Pirelli Minimo mysteriously vanished from Pirelli's underwater catalogues until 1974, when it returned for a "swan song":

Italian: "Minimo. 4) Di gomma nera, azzurra, gialla, secondo la disponibilità. Ghiera in materia plastica rossa o nera. Bioculare, con cristalli temperati di forma trapezoidale. Sgocciolatoi perimetrali al bulbo oculare. Ventosa interna per una completa tenuta. Bloccaggio a pressione del cinghiolo. Volume ridottissimo, e ampissimo campo visivo. Imballo di spedizione: scatole da 20 pezzi.
Rough translation: "Minimo. 4) Black, blue, yellow rubber, according to availability. Red or black plastic band. Trapezoidal-shaped, tempered-glass twin lenses. Circumferential drains at the eyeball. Internal suction pad for complete seal. Strap pressure lock. Very low volume, and very wide field of view. Shipping packaging: boxes of 20 pieces."

OK, I cheated a bit, but so did Pirelli, recycling an old product name as it has done several times already in our thread. And it will happen, next time, when I review the Pirelli Narvalo mask at the weekend. By then the festive season will be approaching its end with Twelfth Night just to come after the New Year celebrations. Keep well and stay safe in the meantime.

 

[Popgun Pete]

Plastic face plates tend to scratch up and fog, so these masks with a moulded nose piece in the actual lens would not be long-lived unless you were careful with it. Today people can buy mask transport boxes that stop the mask jiggling around with the rest of the gear, but the mask needs to go in the box clean of any sand.