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An article about the Cis-Linar set said:- > ... until Marine Boy divulges the secret formula of oxygum ... RLaird <RLaird@pe*.co*> replied:- > Did I miss something here, or is this a British turn-of-phrase? There was a cartoon series about a boy called Marineboy. To avoid the light fast tone and personalities and action of the series becoming loaded down with breathing set technology, its author assumed a fictional substance called `oxygum'; while the diver chews some of it, it releases oxygen on demand without causing any diving gas physiology depth problems. Such is fiction. In science fiction there have been infinity imaginary substances and devices assumed, to make stories run at a pace acceptable to readers. Another diving example of this tendency in fiction is where Jules Verne in `20000 Leagues under the Sea' assumes a duration of 6 to 8 hours!!! for a primitive aqualung-like device called the `aerophore' that Rouquayrol and Denayrouze invented about 1860. The aerophore existed in reality, but with maximum `cylinder' (actually a sphere) pressure only 30 bars (Jules Verne said 50 bars) it had to be surface-supplied and the air tank was only a baleout. It had a genuine aqualung-type regulator; if only it had stayed in public knowledge until the first proper gas cylinders were made in the 1880's!! But it was forgotten too soon, and the various constant-flow compressed air sets invented from then to the 1930's didn't get very far.
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