Leonardo Da Vinci, is said to have originated the respirator concept when he suggested that a finely woven cloth be dipped in water to protect sailors from a toxic powder weapon he had created, but on July 2nd 1850, Benjamin Lane of Cambridge in the county of Middlesex and State of Massachusetts received the first U.S. Patent Number US7476 A for self contained breathing apparatus called the gas mask.
The new useful instrument called, “Lanes Pneumatic Life Preserver,” as designed as a gas mask to improve better breathing through the apparatus thereby enabling a person to enter` buildings without being effected by toxic gases.
Today, there are two types of respirators: the air-purifying respirator and the air-supplying respirator.
Lewis P. Haslett got the first United States patent in 1849 for the air-purifying respirator. Called “Haslett’s Lung Protector,” the wearer had access to filtered air due to the two one-way clapper valves. One valve allowed inhalation of air through a filter made of moistened wool or other porous material and the other released exhaled air into the atmosphere.
For the rest of the 1800s, other inventors added to the work of Haslett and Stenhouse.
In 1871, John Tyndall came up with a fireman’s respirator. Samuel Barton made a more elaborate device around 1874 using rubber, metal and glass for the construction of his respirator and combining different layers of filtering elements.
George Neally designed a “smoke-excluding mask” in 1877. Bernhard Loeb and Louis Muntz invented respirators that were connected to a metal filter in 1891 and 1902, respectively.
Today’s YouTube video clip brought to you by user name Jack Kirchner, describing to you the series gas mask called the History of the M17 Series Field Protective Mask.
Why are there so many inventors for the gas mask?
When you file a patent it takes months, even years to actually get the patent that you applied for, so as new inventors design a better product for the consumer, the more history seems a little confusing of who was the first inventor to invent the gas mask.
However it was Benjamin Lane being accredited for inventing the air-supplying respirator in 1850. His respirator, rather than filtering the air entering it, carried a supply of compressed fresh air.
Contrary to some modern day opinion, there is no single inventor of the “gas mask”. In fact, there were patents for such devices as early as 1887. A first gas mask to be used by miners was introduced by Alexander von Humboldt already in 1799, when he worked as a mining engineer in Prussia.
Perhaps the most common misconception about gas mask history is that it began with a device invented by Garrett A. Morgan.
In fact, Morgan’s invention (patented in 1914, Nos. 1090936 and 1113675) was less like a modern gas mask than many others that proceeded after it.
In lieu of todays story, as you breathe in today’s information, remember without inventors inventing a smarter gadgets and designs for us to use, life as we know it might be hard to swallow, as we gasp for air for our latest invention to make our lives more convenient, as I end this story by saying, “Hurrah for the gas mask!”
Written & Designed by JD Mitchell
jdmitchelldesigns@gmail.com
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