Basic gear from mid-twentieth-century Italy: Other manufacturers

[David Wilson]

I am grateful, as always, for the "likes", Sam and Jale.

Today we move on to the Italian diving equipment company SALVAS, which later merged with another Italian company, Shark, into an entrprise known as Salvas-Shark. For the sake of simplicity, I am minded to treat the products of these two companies separately. When I review Salvas, therefore, I shall omit any masks, snorkel-masks, snorkels and fins first launched as Shark products.

Here is an excellent "potted history" of Salvas from Luigi Fabbri's Blu Time Scuba History site:

SALVAS​

Around 1933, several artisans which produced helmets and different deep diving equipment for the Italian Navy grouped in SIAS - Società Italiana Apparecchi di Salvataggio (Italian company of rescue apparatus) which patented in Italy, the oxygen rebreather produced by English Siebe, Gorman & Co, on behalf of Sir Robert Henry Davis.

Later becoming SALVAS - Società Anonima Lavorazioni Varie Apparecchi di Salvataggio (Anonymous company manufacturer of different rescue apparatus), at the beginning of the Second World Was began designing and manufacturing oxygen rebreathers for the Italian Navy, in its headquarter in Rome, that will continue to do, also for the professional diving sector.

Its production was also the oxygen rebreather prototype made from an idea of the Alliata of Villafranca Prince, used for the diving shots of the “Vulcan" movie in 1949, performed by Anna Magnani and Rossano Brazzi. In 1950, the "Universal" oxygen rebreather is launched, with two tanks and full-face mask, also supplied to the Italian Navy while, ten years later, a special regulator is born which soon became famous, the Acquasprint, followed in 1964, by the just as much famous "S1" spear fishing gun with compressed air.

In the same year, the company buys Maggi shoes of Castelnuovo Scrivia, Alessandria province, specialized in rubber manufacture. Production is transferred here and, from this moment, all diving equipment from diving suits to fishing guns to regulators will bear the Salvas Sub brand name. Later, the brand changes again to Salvas Shark.

Here below is the Salvas advertisement in the first issue of Mondo Subacqueo magazine in 1950. The caption top left means "Everything for sport and underwater hunting".

So Salvas offered recreational underwater swimgear right from the outset of the 1950s, when it operated from premises on the Via Ridolfino Venuti 10 in Rome. This is how the building, which is no longer used by Salvas, looks nowadays:

Apologies if you were hoping for something more classical in appearance.

 

[David Wilson]

On now to Salvas eyewear, starting with goggles. Here is the Salvas Monogoggle:

The above from the Rex-Hevea catalogue of 1954. Note how this mask was never designed to cover the nose, offering no means of equalising pressure on the eyes or ears and hence limiting use to relatively shallow waters. Such masks were more typical of pre-war masks.

Notwithstanding these disadvantages, the Monogoggle reappeared in the 1958 Rex-Hevea catalogue alongside the similarly designed Pirelli Tritone:

Fabio Vitale reviewed the two monogoggle models thus on his HDSItalia article:

Italian: "Maschera Salvas, carcassa in gomma azzurra semi-rigida con bordo a cuscinetti d’aderenza ed antipressione. Maschera Tritone Pirelli. Carcassa in gomma rigida colorata e cristallo bloccato con ghiera."
Rough translation: "-a Salvas Mask. Semi-rigid blue rubber body with cushioned edges to increase adhesion and to decrease pressure. -b Pirelli Tritone Mask. Rigid coloured rubber body and lens retained by band."

The Salvas Monogoggle never made it into the 1960s. And there matters shall rest until the weekend, when I shall return with a review of a pair of more conventional Salvas binocular goggles, which had a longer service life. In the meantime, keep safe and stay well.

 

[WeRtheOcean]

This is how the building, which is no longer used by Salvas, looks nowadays:

Are those apartments above? The old-style of building where apartments were in the upper floors of a commercial building?

 

[David Wilson]

Are those apartments above? The old-style of building where apartments were in the upper floors of a commercial building?

No idea, I'm afraid. My last visit to Rome was in the 1970s, when I was unlikely to have been in that part of the city. The view of the building is from a Google search.

Thanks to Jale and Sam for the "likes".

Today we complete our review of Salvas goggles. Several days ago I discussed the Salvas monogoggle, which covered the eyes but left the nose exposed to the elements after the fashion of much spearfishing eyewear of the 1930s. Goggles were, and remain, perfectly satisfactory aids to surface swimming but they are bound to cause pain in the eye sockets when water pressure rises during deeper dives underwater. Salvas made such binocular goggles for surface swimming use. They appeared in the Rex-Hevea catalogue of 1954:

The goggles are named after the largest island (Spanish: Mallorca; English: Majorca) in the Balearic Islands, which are part of Spain and located in the Mediterranean (map above). Note the triple split headstrap on the goggles for security and comfort as well as the wide skirts designed to adhere closely to the face and to exclude water from the eyes.

Here is the 1958 Rex-Hevea catalogue entry for Majorca goggles:

 

[David Wilson]

Salvas Majorca goggles remained in production until 1965 at least. Here they are in a German-language Salvas catalogue from 1965:

In that year they appeared in two separate advertisements in the Italian diving magazine Mondo Sommerso:

According to the captions, the goggles will be not only a perfect fit but also an ideal accessory for surface swimming.

Some time midweek we shall get started on Salvas diving masks proper, beginning with those launched during the 1950s, which include the Bucher, Nettuno, Ischia, Cyrano and Bermude models. Until then, keep safe.

 

[Angelo Farina]

I am very anxious to see the Bucher fins and mask. I did know of the Bucher fins, which in the seventies were longly debated here in Italy. There were two factions, one defending the Bucher approach of moving the active surface on the sides of the feet, and the other (my faction) with was promoting fins with the active surface far way from the feet, with some sort of "ports" for avoiding that the part of the fin close to the foot was actively pushing water. In my faction the "top" fin was the Jetfin: of course the much longer, more streamlined and elastic version from Beuchat, which was far superior than the rigid and shorter Scubapro version.
I did never understand why the great success arose to the Scubapro Jetfin: having owned both in the same period the superiority of the Beuchat was quite evident... I did never own the Bucher fins, but some of my friends had them, and I tested them in the pool: they were horrible in my opinion...
Of course the two factions did also promote different kicking styles, different ways of scuba diving, etc. Raimondo Bucher had very strange ideas, definitely NOT mainstream. He did invent some great tools, as the first regulator leveraging on Venturi effect for providing "positive pressure" inhalation (which also I did hate).
He was against the usage of the BCD, of dry suits, and anything "inflatable". He did use just a plastic bag as an emergency buoyancy tool... But he also had some ideas which I endorsed, as the usage of yellow-painted suit, fins and tank...
Another concept he got right was the importance of CO2 in the insurgence of narcosis, and of keeping proper breathing control with an inspiratory pause (instead of the american-style recommendation of "just breath normally" and "never hold your breath").
Raimondo Bucher and his wife Luciana Civico were two of the most skilled Italian divers of past century, and they did have a great influence on both training and equipment.
Luciana was the clear example of how females are actually favoured over males for deep diving, requiring less air and being less affected by narcosis.
They continued diving with air at extreme depths (90-100m) when they were more than 80 years old...
I was at Maldives in 1986, when Luciana did reach 102m in air. During that dive the support team did include two of my former students, Marco and Daniela Gasparini, who did make the video recording of the record...

 

[David Wilson]

I'm grateful, Angelo, for all the details you have given in your posting about Raimondo Bucher. Much of what you have written is new to me and it is great to hear from someone who has actually tried out Bucher fins, which many nowadays will find distinct "odd" both in appearance and design. We shall come to those fins soon enough and I do expect to be posting original Salvas historical advertising copy today containing images of Bucher fins, although their review will be for another day.

So the Salvas Bucher diving mask is named after Raimondo Bucher (above). There is a Wikipedia article in Italian dedicated to him without an English language counterpart. Copy the Italian text (ctrl-C) and paste it (ctrl-V) into Google Translate if you want to find out more. Let us start with the information Fabio Vitale provides in his article about 1950s masks. The Bucher os on the left below:

Italian: "Maschera Bucher Special Salvas. Più indicata per profondisti per le dimensioni ridotte, con carcassa in gomma azzurra e cristallo ovale bloccato da ghiera metallica."
Rough translation: "-a Salvas Bucher Special mask. Small size ideal for deep-water divers. Light-blue rubber body and oval face plate held in place by metal band."

The 1954 Rex-Hevea catalogue also contains a description of the Salvas Bucher:

​

The above description establishes a firm relationship between the mask's design and Bucher's world freediving depth record of 39 metres in 1952.

Here is the corresponding 1958 Rex-Hevea entry:

Note Bucher's responsibility for the mask's design and the emphasis on low volume, not for the sake of equalising pressure, but because of the perceived "buoyancy" of the air trapped inside high-volume masks. The "steel blocking ring", by the way, is the metal retaining band surrounding the face plate.

 

[David Wilson]

The Bucher diving mask appeared several times in 1961 advertisements and remained in production until at least 1963. These from 1961:

while this is from 1963:

As you can see the Bucher is available in two versions, one with and one without the retaining band, priced accordingly.

We end today with some images of the Bucher mask found elsewhere. These from the Turin Underwater Museum:

The version with the retaining band, therefore. I rather like the old German style "Fraktur" font used for the name "Bucher" on the top of the mask. The first name "Raimondo" is clearly Italian in origin, while "Bucher" suggests that the family originally hailed from German-speaking Europe, in this case the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

And here we shall pause for today. More at the weekend. In the meantime, keep safe and stay well.

 

[David Wilson]

Salvas mask of the day this weekend is the Nettuno, which I am sure you can work out bu now to be Italian for "Neptune", ancient Roman deity of the sea and planet in our solar system. In his HDS Italian article, Fabio Vitale partners this mask with the Bucher, which we reviewed several days ago. The Nettuno is on the right below:

Italian: "Maschera Nettuno Salvas. Ha un’ottima adesività per la sagoma del facciale; la carcassa è in robusta gomma azzurra con cristallo ovale. È realizzata del tipo Standard, con cristallo comune e senza ghiera, e del tipo Lusso con cristallo Securit bloccato da ghiera metallica. Entrambe in misura unica media."
Rough translation: "Salvas Nettuno [Neptune] mask. Perfect fit for any facial shape. Sturdy light-blue rubber body with oval face plate. Standard model comes with ordinary-glass face plate and no fixing band. Luxury model has a safety-glass face plate held in place by metal band. Both medium size only.

Here it is in the 1954 Rex-Hevea catalogue:

So a medium-sized oval mask for general use. What I find noteworthy about this mask is the reference in the caption to "two special protuberances" enabling the nostrils to be pinched for ear-clearing pressure-compensation purposes. The trouble is that these "protuberances" are hardly conspicuous in the accompanying illustration. If they were indeed the familiar kind with finger wells on the outside and bosses siding the nose on the inside, this mask would have been really innovatory back in 1954, half a decade before French manufacturers Georges Beuchat and Rpland Forjot acquired patents for their own compensator masks.

The Nettuno reappeared in the 1958 Rex-Hevea catalogue:

Sadly, the 1958 picture really leaves me none the wiser about the compensator device built into the Salvas Nettuno mask. What a shame!

 

[David Wilson]

The Salvas Nettuno remained available until the mid 1960s, if the equipment lists in the Italian diving magazine Mondo Sommerso are to be believed. Here are the relevant entries from 1963:

1963-1

​

1963-2

So the mask was then obtainable in as many as four versions. The "normale" (normal) was the basic model. "Per ragazzi" designated the youngster's version. "Con ghiera" indicated the presence of a retaining band around the face plate. "Vetro di sicurezza" identified a safety-glass face plate, which commanded the highest price.

I'll stop there. Some time midweek we shall take a look at the Salvas Ischia dive mask, which was launched in the early 1950s like the Bucher and the Nettuno. Here in the UK we shall learn on Monday whether the country will come completely out of lockdown on the 21st of this month. The media consensus is that we should expect a postponement of that event of up to a month because of the current virus variants and vaccination backlog. Keep safe.