Historic Dive Equipment

John Rawlings · Post by **John Rawlings** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 7:43 pm

This past weekend, along with my friends Dan Pontbriand, Bill Walker, Bob Caso and Randy Williams from the Warren/Lake Crescent team, I attended a conference on historical deep sea diving held in Seattle by the Historical Diving Society, of which I am a member. The theme of the conference was PNW pioneers in diving and several of the still-living "greats" were able to attend!

There were presentations on dive helmet modifications and progress made here in the PNW, on the creations of the first decompression computers by a team of Canadian Navy researchers, on the first descents into the abyss by William Beebe and Otis Martin in a diving bell only a few feet across, on PNW contributions to scientific diving, as well as a fascinating presentation on the USS Grayback - a submarine designed to drop off and retrieve special warfare divers in (ahem) "nasty places" to do "loud and destructive nasty things".

All the while we were surrounded by oodles and oodles of classic dive gear, from double-hose regulators to com units, to every type of diving helmet imagineable. I was in hog-heaven!

On Sunday conference attendees could go to the Divers' Institute of Technology (DIT) on Lake Union in Seattle for a tour as well as the opportunity to dive the old classic US Navy Mark V. My buddy, Curt, (Silent Scuba here on NWDC) took advantage of the opportunity and hit the water wearing hundreds of pounds of gear!

I've posted a bunch of photos from the HDS conference as well as a few shots of the Mark V dives here:

http://www.nwdiveclub.com/gallery/v/Joh ... ?g2_page=2

I hope that you find them interesting!

While you're at it, check out the HDS web site at this link:

http://hds.org/index.html

Best regards!

- John

Tangfish · Post by **Tangfish** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 1:35 pm

Great pics John, I especially like this one!

Sounder · Post by **Sounder** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 2:50 pm

I like that picture too...

Hey John - a guy I know of mine named Mitch (brain fart on his last name for the moment) has an extensive collection of antique functional/restored hardhat dive gear. Are you familiar with him?

Tom Nic · Post by **Tom Nic** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 2:57 pm

Great pics and reports John! Interesting stuff...

I'm reading "Neutral Buoyancy", and among other things it gives a pretty decent snap shot of diving history.

John Rawlings · Post by **John Rawlings** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 4:28 pm

Sounder wrote:I like that picture too...

Hey John - a guy I know of mine named Mitch (brain fart on his last name for the moment) has an extensive collection of antique functional/restored hardhat dive gear. Are you familiar with him?

"A guy named Mitch"......I'm afraid that you're going to have to give me more info than that! HA! Doesn't ring a bell!

Calvin! How did you post that photo? Have you put in a quick "slam-bam-thank you Maam" means of doing so, or did you go off to another site, type in a bunch of gibberish, then transfer it over here?

- John

Sounder · Post by **Sounder** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 4:35 pm

I know that's not much to go on - I'll try to remember his name. He was featured on Evening Mag. a year or so ago. I'll call him and get more information for you.

Tangfish · Post by **Tangfish** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 5:39 pm

John, just go to the photo you want to post (in this case, in your NWDC photo album).

1. right click on the photo and select 'copy image address' (or something similar)

2. when posting on NWDC, just paste in that address (should read http://....jpg, or something similar).

3. highlight the address you just pasted and press the 'Img' button above.

Done!

(as a moderator you can actually click to edit my post with your photo above to see what it should look like).

Hope that helps!

John Rawlings · Post by **John Rawlings** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 5:43 pm

OK....I see what you did. Cool.

On my Christmas list, though, is the ability to stuff photos in with a post without having to give them a web address.

Tangfish · Post by **Tangfish** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 6:31 pm

I've definitely got the photo upload on my list of 'things to eventually do', but the last time I tried I ended up screwing the site up for the better part of the day so my next attempt will be a lot more cautious

As a long term solution though, I think our current gallery is quite clunky. I've just created a Flickr Group for NWDC. I'll post about it and see if we want to go with that as a photo gallery instead. Flickr is one of the most innovative companies on the web and it would be nice to piggyback on their creativity rather than depending on software that becomes outdated and unwieldy.

Check out the NWDC Photo Share