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"Dave Sutton" <pilots@na*.ne*> wrote:- > SCUBA in the USA is a (mainly) archaic term differentiating > a free swimming (IE Untethered) diver from a surface supplied > diver, nothing more. "Aqualung" was/is the trade name for US Divers > open circuit SCUBA, and for trademark reasons was/is not generally > used here as a generic term. Interestingly, the Russian name for > SCUBA equipment is 'Akwalung' so take trademarks for what they > are worth! From what I remember, the original spelling was "Aqua-Lung", and the word was invented by a Canadian. It was a tradename that went with the Cousteau-Gagnan patent. The first time most of the UK public heard of the word was in a National Geographical Magazine article about Cousteau in 1953, which set very many people wanting aqualungs. In UK Siebe-Gorman, who made most UK diving gear, likely in league with the navy, decided that sport diving was not for cold dark UK waters, or that diving should be a job and not a weekend sport, or similar, and they kept aqualungs expensive until that new craze of playing at frogmen had faded out and the undersea world were again the realm of commercial divers and the Navy as was before 1945. But sport diving persisted in UK, and diving clubs made home-made aqualungs until a firm in Hexham in Northumberland called Submarine Products designed round the Cousteau-Gagnan patent and made aqualungs sensibly cheap for the public. The BSAC (British Sub-Aqua Club) used "aqualung" as a generic, and it gradually shed its uppercase letters and its hyphen, and nobody did anything effective about it, and the word "aqualung" became a generic in UK. But Submarine Products in their literature called them "breathing sets", not "aqualungs". Luckily the UK Navy didn't requisition the Submarine Products patent, or persuade anyone to put all civilian diving under an industrial licencing and inspectorate, or lean on Calor Gas to redesign their butane regulators to prevent conversion into breathing set parts. For that matter, I have seen uses of "aqualung" to mean oxygen rebreathers also, around the 1960's, including in USA. It seems that US Divers Corp. managed to promote the naval name SCUBA as a generic, and so keep "Aqualung" as a tradename in USA. Tradenames are valuable to firms, and one of the commercial Great Fears is a tradename becoming a generic by general usage. In UK names for frogmen's sets were: Mark I II etc Amphibian; UBA = Underwater Breathing Apparatus, which usually had its gas cylinders across the waist in front; SCBA = Swimmer Canoeists' Breathing Apparatus, which had its gas cylinders lengthways on the frogman's back so they wouldn't get in the way when he was climbing in and out of smallboats. And SCMBA (M = mixture = nitrox, from c.1945, and kept secret until civilians had to retread the same ground.) > > I have dived with a naval frogman type oxygen > > rebreather and with a 40-minute duration oxygen rebreather called a Salvus, > > and the improvement in underwater agility is astonishing. > Which is why several of us are using such equipment now. I'm replacing > my O/C gear with a mixed gas rebreather, and am doing my shallow stuff > with a pure 02 rebreather not all that different from the old Salvus. What make is the oxygen rebreather? Any chance of a picture of it? Where to buy one? See http://yi.com/home/KramerKarl/rebreather/Salvus/index.htm for an article with pictures about the Siebe Gorman Salvus. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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