History
Further information: First appearance of diving helmetsAugustus Siebe is known as the father of Diving. In the year 1837 German-born inventor Augustus Siebe, then living in England, developed a Diving Helmet which was sealed to a watertight, air-containing rubber suit. The closed diving suit, connected to an air pump on the surface, becomes the first effective standard diving dress, and the prototype of hard-hat rigs still in use today. In his obituary Siebe is described as the father of diving.
Siebe Gorman & Co was notable for developing the “closed” diving helmet of the standard diving dress and associated equipment. As the helmet was sealed to the diving suit, it was watertight, unlike the previous “open” helmet systems—which would flood if inverted. The new equipment was safer and more efficient, and revolutionised underwater work from the 1830s.
However, Alexander McKee proposed that brothers John and Charles Deane were the true inventors, and that Siebe was the leading manufacturer of their designs. This is also confirmed by the fact that Siebe's patents post dated the Deane brothers own and other emulators such as the Sadler company.
Commercial diver and inventor Joe Savoie is credited with inventing the neck dam in the 1960s, which made possible a new era of lightweight helmets, including the Kirby Morgan Superlite series (an adaption of Morgan's existing "Band Mask" into a full helmet.) Savoie chose not to patent his invention because of his desire to improve diver safety.
Read more about this topic: Kirby Morgan
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“When the history of this period is written, [William Jennings] Bryan will stand out as one of the most remarkable men of his generation and one of the biggest political men of our country.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)