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  On Sunday 15 Oct 1995 at the Historical Diving Society stand at the diving
exhibition in Birmingham (UK) I saw an aqualung-like backpack device composed
of two cylinders and a big metal box as depicted below. (The box was somewhat
narrower than shown here, but such are the limitations of ascii art.) A video
showed it worn on the back of a hardhat diving suit instead of an airline; the
cylinders were vertical, and the top of the box was connected to the back of
the helmet by 2 short rigid connections. The right cylinder was for oxygen
(Sauerstoff in German); the left cylinder was for air. The video said that
"Draeger (Germany) made it from 1918 onwards. The oxygen and the air are mixed
in an ingenious way in the box. It can be used down to at least 40 meters.".
It had a maker's number 1067 on it. It seems to have been a practical device
and not an experiment. The exhibition and the video said nothing about whether
there was an absorbent canister and/or any sort of demand regulator in the box
or what else happened inside the box. (If it was a rebreather, the inside of
the hardhat diving suit served as the breathing bag.) In either case, a
tech-type self-contained nitrox set that old is amazing. It seems that, even
that long ago, someone had the idea of nitrox to push the narcosis/bends
nuisance deeper until it met the oxygen poisoning risk coming up.
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