Fernez glasses
The Fernez glasses were invented in 1920 by the French engineer Maurice Fernez (born August 30, 1885, † January 31, 1952 in Alfortville ). The Fernez glasses were the direct predecessors of the swimming goggles .
description
Island peoples, particularly pearl divers in the Pacific , have long used underwater goggles made from turtle scales. It consisted of two glasses, one for each eye, connected by a detachable bridge at the front and a strap at the back; in this way the goggles sat on the diver's head.
use
The Fernez glasses were originally developed by Maurice Fernez in 1920 as an accessory to the "Apparat Fernez-2", a surface-mounted helmet diving device . This diving device was used for underwater work, especially for foundations. The first version of the goggles were quite bulky equipment to work at shallow depths. Finally, the easier-to-use Fernez glasses allowed diving to depths between five and ten meters.
According to Boyle-Mariotte's law , the volume of a gas decreases as the pressure on that gas increases. This is a condition that results from the pressure that the water puts on glasses or a mask. The difference between swimming goggles and a diving mask today is therefore that a diving mask has a nasal cavity that is connected to the rest of the mask volume. Through this nasal cavity, permanent pressure equalization to the ambient pressure is achieved via the lungs. Without such a pressure equalization, as with Fernez glasses, the diver with larger pressure differences suffers a barotrauma in and around the eye. A greater diving depth is therefore not achievable with the Fernez glasses. The Fernez glasses are thus a forerunner of today's swimming goggles.
In the 1920s and 30s, underwater hunting and diving developed in the south of France. Frédéric Dumas was one of the first to use Fernez glasses. It was also used by scuba diving pioneers such as Philippe Tailliez and Jacques-Yves Cousteau .
literature
- Hermann Stelzner: diving technique - manual for divers / textbook for diver aspirants . Charles Coleman Publishing House, Lübeck 1943.
- Gert Augustinski: From the air bubble to the diving helmet. The history of the development of diving technology . 2nd edition, self-published, Petersberg 1994.
