5 minute read
DIVING BELLS AND COOKIE JARS
Enter into the fascinating and quite abstract historic world of diving, its equipment, and the etymology of it all.
Advertisement
The diving bell is one of the earliest pieces of equipment designed for underwater exploration. Its use was – quite incredibly – first described by Aristotle, in the 4th Century BC; “they enable the divers to respire equally well by letting down a cauldron, for this does not fill with water, but retains the air, for it is forced straight down into the water”. The dive bell evolved fairly rapidly, from cauldron, to wooden constructions, to Edmond Halley’s ground-breaking design in 1691 which is generally acknowledged as the first true diving bell; capable of remaining submerged for extended periods of time and fitted with a window for underwater exploration.
In 1689, Denis Papin, a French engineer, had suggested that pressure and fresh air inside a diving bell could be maintained by a force pump or bellows. It was, however, exactly 100 years until poor Denis’ idea was implemented – by an engineer named John Smeaton (of Lighthouse fame), who built the first workable diving air pump in 1789. This was another huge evolutionary moment for diving – divers could stay underwater for far longer with a fairly reliable supply of air.
However, as diving became more and more commonplace, divers continued to die from ‘mysterious causes’ which we now know to be decompression sickness, or ‘the bends’. Although medical understanding of what caused this sickness to occur was limited, with the regular loss of lives, it quickly became apparent that a more sophisticated solution was required.
Dive bells continued to evolve into what they have become today; incredibly high-tech, highly-tested pieces of equipment capable of playing a reliable part in keeping commercial divers alive and well at incredible depths. But alongside this evolution came another; that of the dive helmet.
The first dive helmets were invented by the brothers Charles and John Deane in the 1820s. They weren’t intended to be used for diving; they were ‘smoke helmets’ to protect against smoke inhalation, after the brothers witnessed a terrible fire accident in a stable. Designed for use by firemen, the apparatus comprised a copper helmet with an attached flexible collar and clothing garment. A leather hose attached to the rear of the helmet and was used to supply clean air, pumped using a double bellows, while a short pipe allowed the breathed air to escape. In 1827, the smoke helmets were in use, and the brothers began to explore alternative uses for their invention. They began to sell the same helmet attached to a simple diving suit; but it could only be used while the diver was upright in a vertical position, otherwise the helmet would fill with water. Despite this rather alarming design flaw, the brothers successfully explored and salvaged extensive, valuable items from two major shipwrecks, and went on to produce the world’s first diving manual; “The Method of Using Deane’s Patent Diving Apparatus”.
British engineer Augustus Siebe began to work with the Deane brothers to improve their apparatus. Siebe attached a full-length watertight canvas diving suit to the helmet, and introduced an exhaust valve to the helmet which allowed excess air to escape while preventing water from leaking in; a major step towards a safer diving helmet, and the prototype for hard-hat designs still in use today.
Siebe’s design was modified for various purposes and, over the years, became the standard diving dress which revolutionised underwater civil engineering, commercial diving, salvage and naval diving. People became ever-more fascinated with the concept of being able to breathe and survive underwater; humans, previously restricted to land, could now fly in the skies and breathe underwater, opening up two new worlds to explore. Hobbyists around the world, intrigued by the simple yet effectively designed dive helmets which were now becoming more commonplace, began to create their own versions.
In 1935, two 17-year old twin brothers from Wisconsin, Joe and Jerome, made a diving helmet from a glass cookie jar which they raided from their mother’s kitchen. Welding thick sheet copper to the heavy glass, they were able to supply air through a two-cylinder pump and enjoy the excellent, 360 degree vision which the cookie jar provided at a depth of 35 feet. Though the photos from this era are certainly quite comical, they show just how enthralled the general public were; a new world had opened up beneath their feet, and everyone wanted a chance to experience life beneath the surface.
Commercial diver and inventor Joe Savoie invented the neck dam in the 1960s, which opened the door for a new breed of lightweight helmets. Savoie chose not to patent his design, instead welcoming others to adapt and fine-tune the invention to improve diver safety; acutely aware from his own experience as a diver that there was much to do to ensure the safety of the people who relied on this equipment.
The history of the diving helmet, and diving bells, has played a huge part in the Morar; a key catalyst for both inspiration and technical specifications. Some elements can be fairly quickly spotted; the warm bronze of the casing on the Morar Emerald, for example; an homage to the copper and brass diving
helmets which have become synonymous with diving. Some details are a little finer; the crown is designed to look like a valve found on a divers tank, with straight flutes machined deeply into the sides of the crown.
Above everything else, the diving helmet and the Morar share one main similarity; throughout their design process, ultimate emphasis has been on functionality, fine-tuning, evolution and purpose. It’s fascinating looking back and discovering the innovation that happened from the very first necessity device, through the many iterations and (often ridiculous) attempts at improving the diving bell, then the diving helmet. As each innovation is introduced, the collective understanding of what is worthwhile and what isn’t is furthered. It’s through iterative processes that the best version can be reached.
A lesson that we are very much trying to apply; you never arrive at the perfect solution first time.
