The earliest types were merely goggles. But it was soon learned that
one cannot clear internal sinus pressures with goggles. The goggle ended up
putting a squeeze on the tissues around the eye, and the diver ended up with a
raccoon looking black eyes imprint. The first the masks were round. It was hard to
equalize using these masks. (No way to pinch the nose shut.) You just had to stay
at a given depth and wiggle and play around and try your best. Or you lifted the
mask up, and grabbed the nose and blew. Then you cleared the water out of the
mask. It was a great improvement when AMF had a piece of neoprene rubber glued
to the inside, that one could press the nose up against. Now, most masks have
pinch-pockets, or something similar, to make it easy to clear the sinuses. Voit was
the big manufacturer of masks. Some masks came with built in snorkels with ping-pong balls to keep the water out. These didn't work very well. Plastic face-plates
became popular for a while, but we are now back to safety glass, which will not
shatter into needle-sharp fragments, if it receives a sharp blow. Some masks have
purge valves to purge out the water. Not really any advantage, but in the
development of the "perfect mask" it had its place. Black rubber was for the longest
the only material in masks.
That is until Hollywood came along in 1977.
For the filming of "The Deep," Hollywood needed more light on the face of the leading lady, Jacqueline Bissett.
They helped develop the clear silicon mask for her.
The glass faceplate was also oversize wide.
The idea of a clear silicon side mask caught on quickly, and today most all masks are made out of silicon.
The movie or was it the wet T-shirt look, also helped the dive industry to a resurgence in diving among male teenagers.
The side window was an early development of a mask to reduce the tunnel
vision. One later feature in some masks is a prism lens at the bottom of the face
plate. This gives a much greater viewing angle downward.
At one time, two California optometrists came up with a set of contact
lenses for underwater wear. The front of the lens was optically flat, eliminating the
need for a mask. The wearer looked awful strange out of the water, but they
worked under water. The only problem was that they slipped out under the eyelid,
or the diver lost them.
Today we are looking forward to the "Heads Up Instrumentation Displays"
integrated in the masks.
