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emarsh@au*.as*.sl*.co* wrote to me (Subject: Re: How many people invented aqualungs?):- > Thanks for a most interesting article. Didn't the Japanese develop an aqualung where the intermediate pressure is adjusted by the diver as he changes depth, and he has to inhale through a tube and exhale through his nose? Eric I read once of a constant volume compressed air set called `Ohgushi's Peerless Respirators' invented early this century. It was intended for a bottom-walking diver or on land. It had one big cylinder down the back like an aqualung. It fed into a round fullface mask. It had an ordinary simple blowtorch-type pressure reducer and on/off valve which was brought to the diver's side for him to operate easily by hand. Its inventor foresaw for it a great future in diving and industrially, but as it was even poorer in its duration/weight ratio than a demand valve aqualung is, the hardhat kit made an end of it underwater and the oxygen rebreather made an end of it in industrial use on land. In those times all equipped divers axiomatically walked on the bottom; fins were unheard of until someone in the French Med who wore swimming goggles to keep seawater out of his eyes tried spearfishing in imitation of South Pacific natives, and many Frenchmen in their fondness for hunting imitated in the 1920's and 1930's and gradually developed mask and fins and snorkel as we know them - and some Italian sport spearfisher who likely used an industrial oxygen rebreather at work took one home, and the first frogman ever dived. (A few centuries before, an Italian called Borelli drew a diver free-swimming with leather imitation frog-feet; but, as his breathing set was a big unpressurized air bladder on his back, Borelli was clearly only theorizing and it came to nothing.)
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