JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post  Overall Post 5131

What a fantastic drawing! I don’t mean to diminish this invention at all, though I must say that I was attracted to the article for the very 1950’s comic book naive and technical (Techno-Naive!) quality of the illustration.  Maybe it is just the subject’s profile that has thrown me into this new spin. 

That said, this invention was conceived for the rescue of miners and for oxygen-deprived mining, and is known as the Brown & Mills Aerophor, which was “a liquid air respirator for mine work and rescue”.  I found this in the pages of Nature, 11 October 1924, p. 543.

Brown and Mills evidently worked and improved an earlier idea and design by Col. Cuthbert Blackett (1910), which this citation from Wikipedia: “The Blackett’s Aerophor is a nitrox semi-closed-circuit rebreather with liquid gas storage made in England from 1910 onwards for use in mine rescue and other industrial uses. It was used until the 1950s. “Aerophor” is from Greek αεροφορος = “air-carrier”. Its breathing bag was on the chest, of rubber, in a strong leather case. The other parts were in a backpack. It had two corrugated breathing tubes coming out of the backpack. Its duration on a fill was 2 hours. “