slonda828 wrote:Not to thread hijack but the original unisuit is quite a piece of diving history IMO. I've been trying to pin down when it was first made, and I've also been trying to find one to restore. Apparently, people were much smaller in the 1960s because I can never find one in my size. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
According to the now defunct Swiss vintage diving website Ancarola, Poseidon developed the Unisuit in 1963 after it was commissioned to do so by the Swedish Navy:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050102172 ... seidon.htm
The relevant Italian text reads: "Durante gli anni sessanta, in co-operazione con la Marina svedese Poseidon sviluppò una muta di immersione per uso militare. Il risultato di questa co-operazione fu una drysuit in neoprene, prima muta al mondo con chiusura lampo a tenuta stagna. Il suo nome era UNISUIT. (...) Nel 1963 Poseidon ottenne una richiesta, dalla Marina militare svedese, la muta UNISUIT."
Here's a rough translation: "During the sixties, in cooperation with the Swedish Navy, Poseidon developed a diving suit for military use. The result of this co-operation was a neoprene drysuit, the first diving suit in the world with a waterproof zipper. It was called the UNISUIT. (...) In 1963, Poseidon received a commission from the Swedish Navy, the UNISUIT diving suit."
The publication date of the US Patent US 3740764 mentioned in the Skin Diver Unisuit advertisement I posted earlier was 26 June 1973. You can view the text and images of the US patent at
http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US3740764