Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search

The Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit (LARU, for short) is an early model of closed circuit oxygen rebreather, used by military frogmen. Christian J. Lambertsen designed a series of them in the USA in 1940 (patent filing date: 16 Dec 1940) and in 1944 (issue date: 2 May 1944).[1]

Etymology

The LARU is what the initials SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) originally meant; Lambertsen changed his invention's name to SCUBA in 1952;[2] but later "SCUBA", gradually changing to "scuba", came to mean (first in the USA) any self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. (Modern diving regulator technology was invented by Émile Gagnan and Jacques-Yves Cousteau in 1943 and was not related to rebreathers; nowadays the word SCUBA is largely used to mean Gagnan's and Cousteau's invention and its derivatives.)

History

Lambertsen designed the LARU while a medical student and demonstrated the LARU to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) (after already being rejected by the U.S. Navy) in a pool at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C. in 1942[3][4] The OSS "Operational Swimmer Group" was formed and Lambertsen's responsibilities included training and developing methods of combining self-contained diving and swimmer delivery including the LARU.[5][6]

Design

  • Two apparent large lengthways backpack cylinders under a hard metal cover: the right cylinder is oxygen and the left apparent cylinder is the absorbent canister.
  • Fullface mask with small eye holes like an old-type gasmask
  • Two breathing bags, one on each shoulder.
  • 4 lengths of wide corrugated breathing tubes in a loop: from the mask to one of the breathing bags to the canister to the other breathing bag to the mask.
  • Its harness is a strong cloth jacket that enclosed the diver's chest.
  • Mid front, a long zipped pocket: the diagrams do not show whether it was for kit or for diving weights.

Many diving rebreathers are descended from it. However, there were earlier underwater uses of rebreathers:

See also

References

<templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" />

Cite error: Invalid <references> tag; parameter "group" is allowed only.

Use <references />, or <references group="..." />

External links

  1. Lambertsen's patent in Google Patents
  2. See Lambertsen's homage by the Passedaway.com website
  3. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.