Which is the most durable regulator?

[Gilldiver]

With "Heavy Gear" like the old Mark V brass hats the suit was attached to the helmet with a water proof, or just about water proof seal. So, like Luis said, if you lost the air at the surface the helmet and flexible suit would go to 1 atmosphere. So if you were at say 100', you would have 3 atmospheres pushing you and the suit into the helmet and up the hose. 3 atmospheres doesn't sound like much, but your car tires are at 1 or a little less then 1 atmosphere above the outside pressure. Get the picture?

"Lite gear" like the KM-17 and KM-27 fiberglass helmets usually use a rubber neck dam much like a neoprene drysuit neck seal. So, if the same thing happened water would be pushed past the neck seal and flood the helmet, you wouldn't have the suit trying to push you into the helmet as it is a separate drysuit or, more likely, a standard wet suit (it might have a hot water hook up for cold water diving) and at the same pressure as the water no matter what happens to the helmet.

As for why I brought up the hard hats, the helmet regulator on the Kirby Morgan hats is the same as their metal body 2nd stage regulator. Without the breathing adjustment, this regulator is just about the same as a USD SE2.

Kirby Morgan Dive Systems | SCUBA Regulators

 

[Bob Vincent]

GEEZ ... learned something new ...

 

[Bob Vincent]

I stand corrected ... I've always thaught that it was the first single hose!
Thank you for the enlightenment ... boy I sure needed that after all these years thinking that.

 

[Bob Vincent]

Still scratching my head ...

 

[Bob Vincent]

I could of swore that I even seen the in print somewhere!

 

[Luis H]

I would not quote Wikipedia without confirming its contents, but I have read a very similar write up from a vintage scuba collector that I know of who lives in Australia.


"Porpoise is a tradename for scuba developed by Ted Eldred in Australia and made there from the late 1940's onwards. It included:

A make of single-hose open-circuit scuba
This was the first single-hose open-circuit scuba made in the world. Ted Eldred in Melbourne in Australia started designing it in 1948 to "design round" the Cousteau-Gagnan aqua-lung patent, and to get rid of air supply restrictions that affected early Cousteau-Gagnan-type aqualungs. He started making it commercially in 1952. The Australian Navy adopted it. It was the origin of single-hose scuba regulators. It was much used by Australian scuba divers. The picture shows a set with one cylinder with its valve at the bottom, strapped directly to the back with rucksack-type straps without backpack plate or buoyancy aid, with a single-hose regulator-mouthpiece which could be strapped in. The high-pressure regulator screwed into the side of the cylinder valve; there was no A-clamp."


"An example of the world's first commercially available, single hose SCUBA unit designed and manufactured by Ted Eldred in 1952."

As you can see this predates the Poseidon Cyklon by about 5 years.