Early Years
Eldred was born in Melbourne in 1920. As a young man he lived by the sea near Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne. He started snorkelling as soon as mask, fins and snorkel were available, and wished that he could make or obtain some sort of free-swimming breathing set, until World War II intervened. After World War II in the late 1940s he designed a sport diving oxygen rebreather. Eldred said he had never dived with the Cousteau-Gagnan model of the Aqua Lung, but knew of its existence and its principle. The Aqua Lung was protected by patent and difficult to obtain in Australia. Siebe Gorman had the license to manufacture for Commonwealth countries and could not meet demands. When Eldred decided that rebreathers were not suitable for general sport use, he shifted his focus to developing the world's first single-hose open-circuit scuba set, both with tradename "Porpoise".
Read more about this topic: Ted Eldred
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“Make-believe is the avenue to much of the young child’s early understanding. He sorts out impressions and tries out ideas that are foundational to his later realistic comprehension. This private world sometimes is a quiet, solitary
world. More often it is a noisy, busy, crowded place where language grows, and social skills develop, and where perseverance and attention-span expand.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“The anarchy, assassination, and sacrilege by which the Kingdom of France has been disgraced, desolated, and polluted for some years past cannot but have excited the strongest emotions of horror in every virtuous Briton. But within these days our hearts have been pierced by the recital of proceedings in that country more brutal than any recorded in the annals of the world.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)