Joseph Salim Peress
| Joseph Salim Peress | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1896 |
| Died | June 4, 1978 |
| Engineering career | |
| Significant design | Atmospheric diving suit |
Joseph Salim Peress (1896 – June 4, 1978), was a pioneering British diving engineer, inventor of one of the first truly usable atmospheric diving suits, the Tritonia, and was involved in the construction of the famous JIM suit.
Salim Peress grew up in the Middle East. It is said that his interest in diving suit design started from the observations of the Persian Gulf pearl divers.
Peress had a natural talent for engineering design, and had challenged himself to construct an articulated atmospheric diving suit (ADS) that would keep divers dry and at atmospheric pressure, even at great depth. At the time, little was known about decompression diving. Various atmospheric suits had been developed during the Victorian era, but nobody had yet managed to overcome the basic design problem of constructing a joint which would remain flexible and watertight at depth without seizing up under pressure.
In 1918 Peress began working for WG Tarrant at Byfleet, United Kingdom, where he was given the space and tools to develop his ideas about constructing an ADS. His first attempt was an immensely complex prototype machined from solid stainless steel.
In 1923 Peress was asked to design a suit for salvage work on the wreck of the P&O liner SS Egypt which had sunk in 122 m (400 ft) of water off Ushant. He declined, on the grounds that his prototype suit was too heavy for a diver to handle easily, but was encouraged by the request to begin work on a new suit using lighter materials. By 1929 he believed he had solved the weight problem, by using cast magnesium instead of steel, and had also managed to improve the design of the suit's joints by using a trapped cushion of oil to keep the surfaces moving smoothly. The oil, which was virtually non-compressible and readily displaceable, allowed the limb joints to move freely at depths of 600 ft (180 m), where the pressure was 520 psi (35 atm). Peress claimed that the Tritonia suit's joints could function at 1,200 ft (370 m) although this was never proven.
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