October 12, 2007

Odd Ventilator Pumps Pure Air to Bomb Cellar (Apr, 1940)

Filed under: Useless Tech — @ 9:16 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Apr, 1940
| Buy on Ebay

Odd Ventilator Pumps Pure Air to Bomb Cellar

Knowing that poison gas seldom rises more than thirty feet above ground level, a British inventor worked out an odd device designed to draw fresh air into gasproof shelters on or under the ground. Resembling a giant accordion, a special hand-operated bellows sucks fresh air into the shelter through a flue pipe that extends up forty feet above the ground. Said to be foolproof, the apparatus draws in air at the rate of 400 -cubic feet a minute.

3 Comments »

  1. I’m glad he’s wearing that hat indoors.

    And is that shadow on his face from a bushy mustache, or is it from a cigar?

    Comment by Rick Auricchio — October 13, 2007 @ 9:02 am

  2. Amusingly, that is a near-twin to pumps used by POWs at Stalag Luft III during the digging of the three escape tunnels that were used in a large breakout during WWII.

    Necessity is a gifted teacher…

    Alan

    Comment by mrchurchill109 — November 8, 2007 @ 5:37 am

  3. He’s cutting that awful fine – I’d want more than ten feet measured from where poison gas usually ends!

    Comment by Baron Waste — July 7, 2008 @ 1:18 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

Popular Posts

Recently Last 7 Days
Last 30 Days All Time

46 queries. 0.911 seconds.