Diving Helmets Get Improved and Commonly Used
- 1808: Brizé-Fradin designed a small bell-like helmet connected to a low-pressure backpack air container.
- 1820: Paul Lemaire d'Augerville (a Parisian dentist) invented and made a diving apparatus with a copper backpack cylinder, and with a counter-lung to save air, and with an inflatable lifejacket connected. It was used down to 15 or 20 meters for up to an hour in salvage work. He started a successful salvage company.
- 1825: William H. James designed a self-contained diving suit that had compressed air in an iron container worn around the waist.
- 1827: Beaudouin in France developed a diving helmet fed from an air cylinder pressurized to 80 to 100 bar. The French Navy was interested, but nothing came of this.
- 1829: Charles Anthony Deane and John Deane of Whitstable in Kent in England design the first air-pumped diving helmet for use with a diving suit. It is said that the idea started from a crude emergency rig-up of a fireman's water-pump (used as an air pump) and a knight-in-armour helmet used to try to rescue horses from a burning stable. Others say that it was based on earlier work in 1823 developing a "smoke helmet". However the suit was not attached to the helmet, so a diver could not bend over or invert without risk of flooding the helmet and drowning. Nevertheless, the diving system is used in salvage work, including the successful removal of cannon from the British warship HMS Royal George in 1834-35. This 108-gun fighting ship sank in 65 feet of water at Spithead anchorage in 1783.
- E.K.Gauzen, a Russian naval technician of Kronshtadt naval base (a district of Saint Petersburg), offers a "diving machine". His invention was an air-pumped metallic helmet strapped to a leather suit (an overall). The bottom of the helmet is open. The helmet is strapped to the leather suit by metallic tape. Gauzen's diving suit and its further modifications were used by the Russian Navy until 1880. The modified diving suit of the Russian Navy, based on Gauzen's invention, was known as "three-bolt equipment".
- 1837: Following up Leonardo's studies, and those of Halley the astronomer, Augustus Siebe develops standard diving dress, a sort of surface supplied diving apparatus.
- By attaching the Deane brothers helmet to a suit, Augustus Siebe develops the Siebe "Closed" Dress combination diving helmet and suit, considered the foundation of modern diving dress. This was a significant evolution from previous models of "open" dress that did not allow a diver to invert. (Siebe-Gorman went on to manufacture helmets continuously until 1975).
- 1855: Joseph-Martin Cabirol patents a new model of standard diving dress, mainly issued from Siebe's designs. The suit is made out of rubberized canvas and the helmet, for the first time, includes a hand-controlled tap that the diver uses to evacuate his exhaled air. The tap includes on its turn a safety valve which prevents water from entering in the helmet. Until 1855 diving helmets were equipped with only three circular windows (for front, left and right sides). Cabirol's helmet introduced the later well known fourth window, situated in the upper front part of the helmet and allowing the diver to watch above him. Having been presented to the Exposition Universelle in Paris Cabirol's diving dress won the silver medal. These original diving dress and helmet are now preserved at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris.
Read more about this topic: Timeline Of Diving Technology, 19th Century
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