Siebe Gorman Proto
Industrial rescue rebreather set

The Proto is a type of rebreather that was made by Siebe Gorman. It was an industrial breathing set and not suitable for diving. It was made from 1914 or earlier to the 1960s or later. (Distinguish from "Proton", which is another sort of Siebe Gorman rebreather). Also known as proto suits.
Its breathing bag was worn on the chest. It had one or two oxygen cylinders, across the lumbar part of the back: often one, but this image shows two. Its duration in use was one or two hours, dependent on the size of oxygen cylinder fitted. Its absorbent (tradename Protosorb) was loose in the bottom of the breathing bag, restrained by a perforated cloth partition, and not in a canister. It had two wide breathing tubes running from the breathing bag to either a strapped-in mouthpiece (used with goggles) or an industrial-type fullface mask known as a Vistarama face mask, with a curved window and an inner orinasal mask.
The public source identifies “Siebe Gorman Proto” as industrial rescue rebreather set. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Siebe, Gorman and Proto.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4049443. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1914.
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This entry incorporates text from “Siebe Gorman Proto” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.