1882 deep-sea diving suit

Calling Cory Doctorow! Calling Cory Doctorow! Mister Doctorow, please proceed to a brass courtesy bathysphere.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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jennyhart

I was going to call it a steampunk’s “wet dream” in my original post, but I refrained. Heh.
secretmojo

Hey, it’s the Carmagnolle suit! Beautiful and iconic, but didn’t make it past prototype. If I remember correctly, the iron joints seized up under pressure, making it impossible to move around [!].

My favorite diving suit of old is the Klingert, as it has a cuteness too strong to ignore:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/inuro/2576868505/
samanth0r

Holy Moly, RAPTURE IS REAL wake up sheeple!
lectroid

@Technogeek

The 300 club is, indeed, real, and involves exactly what you said. Running naked from a 200+ (F) degree sauna to a pretermined spot and back (you are allowed shoes and a hat) when the ambient outdoor temperature is -100 or lower.

I’ve met the author of “Big Dead Place”, a fascinating book about the weird corporate/frontier universe that exists down there. There are many MANY pictures of various workers, scientists, etc. all standing out at the geographic butt of the world in the altogether.

here’s one, SFW
http://theglobalguy.com/antarctica/the-300-club
Ito Kagehisa

Wonderfully baroque design, but terrible gaposis in the shoulder articulation. I suppose they couldn’t do a properly fitting joint once they’d riveted pigskin to the edges of the individual plates.

I like the way one porthole is made to unscrew, because it took so long to get in and out of the suit you’d asphyxiate if it didn’t have an air vent.
Anonymous

This suit almost seems like a 19th century version fo the AX-5 hard shell space suit.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AX-5-spacesuit.jpg
jfrancis

Reminds me a little of a Clockpunk anti-plague suit I wrote about where the air is circulated and filtered over a Bible.

http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2009/07/fury_of_the_ill.html
Tomas

I cannot help but link to this…

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/19/howto-make-a-bioshoc.html
Anonymous

AMAZING, wonder how deep they made it in that thing? Check out the link for the elbow joint work. Fascinating.

Reminds me of the chapter in Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything … about the intrepid English scientists that were on the absolute forefront of deep sea diving. It was probably the culmination of the best technology of it’s time, AND YEARS of backbreaking labor.

Wonder if Sid Viscous ever went for a swim in it?
nixiebunny

Aha! Actual 100-year-old artifacts aren’t festooned with non-functional, decorative valves and gauges that simply take up space and reflect photons. This thing’s 100% useful metal.

Those shoulder and elbow pivots are truly a wonder to behold. Concentric spheres with progressively wider notches for the arm to move – there’s some real engineering. I like the rows of tiny rivets at the edge of each layer, keeping the primitive packing material (leather?) in place.
Anonymous

Reminds me of the Burton Damnthing….

http://www.iamanangelchaser.com/files/art/burton_damnthing.jpg
imag

Holy crap – that thing is seriously impressive.

Ultra technology of its time. I’ll bet anything there will be “chip punk” or some equivalent, in a few decades. Circuit boards with all their capacitors and wires will look pretty over the top then too. Circuitpunk… hmmm….
phisrow

Obviously the propulsion tech of the day wouldn’t have had a chance in hell of getting you there; but I’d be fascinated to know if the level of technology of this suit would(probably with some extra insulation inside) have worked in the conditions of the surface of the moon…
bex

(described as never being used)

in other words leaked like a sieve so was never uded
dargaud

Technogeek and Lectroid, I’m a member of the 300 club and have the pics to prove it… Big Dead Place is well worth a read, I don’t know if it’s been featured on BB before, but it should be.
Anonymous

looks like a Dr. Who bad guy
Brainspore

The multiple porthole viewing setup is very reminiscent of SpaceShipOne’s cockpit windows. It’s fun to see how people can find similar solutions to design problems centuries apart.
awwhoneybear

this is so terrifying to me…being cooped up in a heavy metal suit under deep water, ah! but, fascinating and beautiful, nonetheless.
menalaus

I think you mean “Mr. Doctorow, would you kindly proceed to a brass courtesy bathysphere. “
Kimrod

Thanks for the nightmares!
demidan

More like a suit of Gothic armor, but my god how strong would you have to be to even move your arms? The paulderons alone must weight one hundred pounds!
Anonymous

I’ll bet anything there will be “chip punk” or some equivalent, in a few decades.

My impression is at this point “steampunk” just means nineteenth-century retro tech, and “dieselpunk” means anything that is or is supposed to be from 1900 to 1949.

Reading anything more elaborate into it is no longer amusing.
pjcamp

How many eyes does Cory have?
technogeek

#6: I believe these things were designed to be watertight but not necessarily airtight. As long as fresh air is being continuously supplied under pressure from the surface, that’s actually a pretty decent solution — letting the air escape frees you from having to get rid of CO2 via some more complicated mechanism. It does obscure your view somewhat, admittedly.

Also, they were designed primarily to withstand pressure inward, not outward. That yields different decisions in how one mounts the viewports, to take one example.

So… Given the alternative of going out the airlock in this or in your skivvies, you _might_ want to try this… if someone can provide you with an umbilical to supply air. But I’m not sure you wouldn’t be better off trying the lunar equivalent of the antarctic “360 degree dash”.

(Which, according to rumor, involves preheating in a sauna, dashing out unprotected into the hundred-below weather to run around the building, and then diving back into the sauna to reheat before frostbite can set in.)
fartle

Yeah, thats kinda bioshocly
arkizzle / Moderator

John, PropPunk? WingPunk?
arkizzle / Moderator

Anonymous11

What, you mean like RocketPunk, JetPunk and AtomPunk?

fun! fun! fun!
Derek C. F. Pegritz

Mr. Bubbles!
Anonymous

http://www.divingheritage.com/armoredkern2.htm

From the post about the big daddy costume.
John Napsterista

And let us not forget airpunk. I mean, câ€™mon:

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/MA/GeeBee_R-2replica_96.jpg
EH

Useless without space for a cigarette holder
igpajo

That’s awesome! Reminds me a little of a Micronauts figure I had about 30 years ago.
Saskplanner

One of my favourite museums in Paris. Inexplicably, NO ONE ever goes there. I stood in line with, like 3 other people for it to open, and I spent HOURS pretty much on my own…

When you see this thing in person, it’s really freakish.
Anonymous

I’m working on stonepunk. Crazy flint art!