Decompression tank!

[nikeajax]

The wife and I were watching the old TV show from the 1970's, Emergency, last night, and they rescued a guy who had an air embolism while diving off of Catalina Island, and a heart attack, they used a decompression tank. If you have Netfilx, you can stream this, it's season-5, episode-7, kinda cool, as I had no idea, at all, what they'd look like!
Jaybird

[duckbill]

Emergency! was my favorite show during a portion of my pre-teen life. I wanted to be a fire fighter. Paramedeic didn't float my boat, but for some reason I still prefered Emergency! to the other fire fighting show, the name of which I don't even remember.

[Deleted]

If you look through some of the old US Divers catalogs you will see that they offered a portable one man decompression chamber for sale.

[duckbill]

No dive kit is complete without it! Ask your local dive shop to order one ;-)

[SeaRat]

Here's an ad from Rick and Barbara Carrier's book, Dive, the 1957 edition.


John

[nikeajax]

Well, the one on the show was a room actually. I think they did the real-deal on the show, with a helium mixture, as fireman Johnny Gage and the doctor were speaking in Mickey Mouse voices.
When I was a kid watching Jacques Cousteau, on some of the deeper dives, they used the helium mixture; I remember thinking that was super cool. The only thing I can recall is an inky-blackness and those really high voices.
Somehow, TV shows aren't as good anymore: these days, you say to yourself, "Wow, kinda cool, neat!", but back then when things weren't as safe without all the quadruple back up safety everythings, it was more "Holy bleeping pleep that's insane, how the bleep are they gonna do that?" It also helped that Rod Serling was the narrator, so when he said it had never been done, your blood ran cold. WOW, Jacques Cousteau and Rod Serling, all on the same show; SIIIIIIIIIGH!
Jaybird