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I wrote:- > When computerized rebreathers are finally developed and on sale, how useful > will they be? Sport, yes; but how far will work divers (who seem to me to be > more able to make use of the long durations of dive that some of these sets > provide) be able to use the resulting freedom without running foul of infinity > laws tying divers to air lines and all sorts making it nearly as heavy and > cumbersome as the old-style standard gear? ... I suspect that another attitude that divers have to fight is that "untethered free diving is only for special frogman-type action missions, not for general use". Once I read a UK 1950's naval diving manual, which duly mentioned rebreather frogman kit, but went on to say that the right way to use an aqualung was with a heavy Sladen-type drysuit and weighted boots. That and a generalized desire to keep hold of everything and control everything and to have everything on a tether and recorded in official papers. If such laws become much more of an ass, the time may well come for work tech divers to decide their own policy and `drive by the road conditions', same as in the 1920's and 1930's in UK, what made Parliament get rid of the old silly universal 20mph road speed limit was supermassive law-breaking both direct speeding and illegally warning other drivers of police speed traps, until Parliament saw sense. Governments can be very thick. Same as twice in England, the only thing that forced Parliament into finally ordering adequate improvements to London's sewer system was when Old Father Thames personally took action and in a time of heat and low water stank out the House of Commons, which is built beside the River Thames. I suspect that still, one part of it is secret underwater kit departments of navies not liking independent un-secret civilian duplication of kit. Same as some UK sport divers who once wanted to develop underwater radio ran into strange official restrictions. Same as the UK navy started using nitrox in its frogman rebreathers from 1943 (OK, they called it "mixture"), and kept the details a tight secret for over 20 years until civilians had to retread the same ground as if it was a new road. Then the UK navy coughed up that it had had nitrox all the time. Get navies off our backs! To the unprintable with secret frogman departments, there are work civilian divers who need the kit and ideas that are being kept secret or forbidden! Same as that (a) world Communism falling and the end of the Cold War, and (b) computerized mixture rebreathers coming out, at nearly the same time, is very likely not to be a coincidence. There could have been automatic mixture rebreathers as long as there have been fuel cells (to use a little fuel cell as a ppO2 sensor) and electronics skill enough to make electronic parts to automatically adjust the oxygen and diluent valves to keep the ppO2 constant, i.e. for a long time; and I suspect that God-knows-umpteen such patents have been requisitioned `for national security' at patents offices and tracelessly swallowed by navies' secret frogman departments and the inventor forbidden to develop his ideas further or publish them, and meanwhile civilian divers have had to suffer the dangers of air at depth, the narcosis and the bends and the nuisance of carting heavy air cylinders about and refilling them.
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