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  One good example of a regulator that kept supplying air at low cylinder
pressure was a late 1960's Submarine Products `Atlantic' regulator (made in
Hexham in Northumberland in England) (the sort with two wide hoses) that I
started scuba diving with: I could suck a little air through it (out of water)
when it was not on a cylinder.
  Those were the old days: divers' lifejackets only just starting to be heard
of; diving regulators made from old Calor (butane) gas regulators were a very
recent memory; most training and many serious dives were done with small
ex-RAF pilots' oxygen cylinders that divers called `tadpoles' from the shape.
No backpack shell but the cylinder rested straight against your back.
  Many diving clubs bought double-skin foam neoprene in bulk and made their
own wetsuits. `Drysuit' meant the old thin frogman type, and indeed Siebe
Gorman used `Frogman' as a tradename for a drysuit that it sold.
  The first diver in my club to routinely dive with a lifejacket (a French
make called Fenzy) was thought unusual for it, and they nicknamed him
`Monsieur Fenzy'. Later someone in my club started making and selling
air-pressurized divers' lifejackets.
  PS. Re lifejackets/stabs: sometimes as practice I fill it from atmosphere on
the surface using my lungs. Rather a panicky-looking process, but I feel a
need to get in practice of doing it in case I am ever stuck away from land
with my aqualung and my lifejacket/stab cylinder both empty.

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