Diving helmet
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Diving helmets are worn by mainly by professional divers engaged in surface supplied diving.
The helmet seals the whole of the diver's face from the water, allows the diver to see, provides the diver with breathing gas, provides an anchor point on the diver for the umbilical supplying the breathing gas, protects the diver's head when doing heavy or dangerous work, and provides voice communications with the surface. If the diver becomes unconscious, the helmet is more secure than breathing from a mouthpiece, which must be gripped between the teeth.
There are several types of diving helmets:-
- The spherical copper helmets with brass and glass windows of the historical standard diving dress
- The modern commercial helmet, Superlite-17B helmet
- Light-weight "transparent dome" type helmets used recreationally, or by television presenters who want the whole face to be seen by the audience.
An alternative to the diving helmet that allows communication with the surface is the full face diving mask.
Nowadays "diving helmet" sometimes means a hard safety helmet like a workman's helmet that covers the top and back of the head but not the face and does not keep air in and water out.
During the First World War the British Army used a few diving helmets out of water as emergency protection from mustard gas.
See Timeline of underwater technology#Diving helmets appear for the history of the diving helmet.
