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Anyone know what company invented the first backplate and wing? Any pictures?
I doubt a company did it more likely a cave diver who decided his horse collar bcd would work better sandwiched between his tanks and the hard plastic backplate
This predates the items mentioned in the DR article. One of my regrets is selling, long ago, the ones I owned. Add a couple of d-rings and you are good to go. They can even be used with some of the available wings. Ida thought an enterprising diver could rig this to carry doubles.
The first wing was on the Scuba Pro BCP that was introduced in the early '70s with a harness equipped simple molded pack. The BP/W combo is the best clone of that early nearly perfect system. SP in their "infinite wisdom" stopped supporting the BCP at about the same time the pattent ran out.
As you can see there are some early examples. Another one was a Mares had a quick change plate in the mid 60's. You could pull a pin and move the plate and harness between tanks. This was well before BC's.
I credit the modern back plate and harness to DiveRite in the mid to late 80's. The back plate was ABS plastic and the BC was what they market as the Classic Wing.
I have both around here somewhere.
The Stainless Steel back plate is a Northeast wrecker invention that occured about 1990/91. The way I remember it, on the old dive boat Wahoo some divers were looking at the DiveRite plastic plate and talking about it being to flexable and how a metal one might be better. One of the divers worked in a sheetmetal shop and took the plastic plate and made knock offs of it in stainless steel for about 10 people. The next weekend he gave them out (each guy who got one had his name stamped into it). On that day there was another diver who just happened to be the owner of Ocean Management Systems (OMS).
About three weeks later OMS applied for a patent on the Staninless Steel backplate and harness system.
All the other plates are knockoff's from there - they just have to be 30% diffrent or so to get around the Patent.
Anyone know what company invented the first backplate and wing? Any pictures?
The early 70's saw lots of wing/backplate designs. SeaQuest, ScubaPro. Atpac, etc. all had pure back inflation designs on a fixed backplate. My fav was the SQ BCP it was a 33 lb. lift wing on a solid backpack. A good clean front profile.
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Originally Posted by Jorbar1551
