In researching his book, he contacted Ted Eldred who sent him his syllabus from the first single hose diving school, with some notes written on it. He sent me a photo copy and it arrived today.
Ivor attended the first single hose scuba class that was taught by the new school on August 10th, 1953. The Royal Australian Navy was to become the first military organization to be equipped with single hose scuba. In the early days there was still an interest in rebreathers and Ted Eldred asked the navy if he could borrow some of their oxygen and nitrox rebreathers to include in the diving course. The navy said: "yes".... provided that Commander Batterham was in charge of the instruction. They also wanted the information on all attendees. The Australian Navy wanted to be able to call upon these divers in time of war. The government also provided low cost army rifles and ammunition to the shooting clubs in those days, so they had a pool a precision shooters if needed. This is the sort of thing they had learned from WWII. Having a coast of 12,000 miles and a small population requires these things to be done. This school would give them a pool of divers to call upon.
Ted's reply mentioned the navy's help and their graduation certificate had three items printed on it: compressed air breathing appliance, closed circuit oxygen apparatus and closed circuit mixed apparatus. They wrote the student's name on the certificate and crossed out the items which were not a part of that diver's particular course. batterham signed and dated the certificate. The course took 10 night to complete and certification was valid for three years.
Ted wrote that he began work on the single hose regulator in 1948 when he read about the aqua lung. He was working in a foundry, casting aluminum and magnesium and his scuba work was done when time permitted. The term scuba came from the late Lambertson and applied to oxygen rebreathers in the USA. The Australians call it CABA (compressed air breathing apparatus). The first prototype was ready in 1949 but it was kept secret. The name Porpoise was registered in 1950 and the company name Breathing Appliances was registered in 1952. The first Porpoise was sold early in 1952
This is the prototype being tested. You can see the first stage is an oxygen welding reduction valve.
The first model was called a CA-1 and it came in a fiber school boy's writing box:
This is the first Porpoise model being used in our NAUI vintage course;
