Early scuba gear

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

DougK

Contributor
Messages
102
Reaction score
10
Was watching a James Bond movie last night, didn't catch the name as it was playing as I was flipping channels, but stopped because it had a major underwater scene. Premise was they were looking for a bomb and fighting underwater.

I noticed that this early scuba gear had a interesting regulator hose. It was a dual supplied hose -- meaning it was attached to the tank on both sides of the mouthpiece.

This equipment did not apprear to be a rebreather in the movie but looks similar to those units of today. It looked as if air was vented out the back near the top of hte tank, but this could not be determined by watching the movie.

How was scuba equipment of the this vintage configured?
 
Movie is "Thunderball". It's a classic.

Regulators are standard double hose regulators...exactly as you noted, single loop, inhale from one side, exhale to the other, vented out at the first stage behind the head. Aqua-lung has recently begun marketing an upgraded version of this reg. They're pretty proud of it, though, and I suspect it won't gain any astonishing market share.

Other guys on the board may have some schematics or diagrams for you. Hope this helps,

Doc
 
Air comes in on the right and out on the left. They are fun to use, but very different from a single hose reg, don't try one without learning how to use them.
 
You mean one like I am using here? I am diving in this pic (Summer of 05) a square label Royal Aqua Master (RAM) from US Divers circa 1966. One of if not the finest regulators ever built. It might surprise you to know that many divers still use these double hose regulators. The RAM has essentially the same first stage as the Conshelf or even todays Titan and they can be tuned to breath effortlessly and with adapters can support LP devices and SPGs. The Royal Aqua Master, King of the Hill. N
 
The double hose style is still popular with some u/w photographers as the bubbles come out at the first stage and stay out of the picture.
 
Unfortuanetly the "new" Mistral is a parts bin engineering POJ. Does not breath as good as the RAM, hoses are to big and bouyant and mouthpiece is uncomfortable and all in all a not very good attempt at reintroducing double hose regulators to modern divers. It is a shame but the real deal is the better deal. N
 

Back
Top Bottom