In 1915, human practice was replenished with a new terrible episode: the army of one of the belligerents first used weapons of mass destruction. Under the city of Ypres, the Germans sent chlorine jets to the positions of French troops - and thousands of soldiers died in a short time.
The fact that this crime will not go unpunished, it became clear very soon, and the response gas attack was not long in coming. However, soon the scientists of the Entente countries and the allies of Austria-Hungary realized an obvious fact: poisoning people is much easier than saving, and even more so curing.
Russia was not the initiator of the use of OM, but it was in our country that a gas mask was invented. As a true scientist, Nikolai Zelinsky tested the device on himself, he spent several minutes in a room filled with a mixture of chlorine and phosgene (the most common military poisons of the time), and came out unscathed.
Types of gas masks during the First World War did not differ in variety. All of them were replicas of Zelinskyโs invention and differed only in the shape of the mask, country of origin and name. Reliable protection was provided if there was no delay in putting on, and the rubber and metal box were not damaged.
In anticipation of a new world carnage, the twenties and almost all the thirties of the 20th century passed. Regular civil defense exercises were held in the USSR with the aim of training not only the soldiers of the Red Army, but also workers in industrial enterprises, as well as civilians. New types of filtering gas masks appeared, they were intended for adults, children, horses (the main draft force and the basis of the cavalry) and even dogs, whose role in the upcoming war was not yet clear.
Throughout World War II, German soldiers regularly dragged cylindrical corrugated cases with gas masks, but they were never needed, Germany was defeated without poisonous substances. The Nazis, too, did not dare to use them, guessing their considerable reserves from their opponents.
But after the victory a new war began, a cold one, and in its course there were such poisons against which the filters were powerless. Molecules of OM (most often binary, that is, becoming fatal after the merger of two relatively harmless components) became smaller, activated carbon passed them. In response, new types of gas masks were invented, mainly insulating ones. The latter are practically an element of a space or underwater spacesuit with an oxygen source and complete sealing of the internal space.
But not only military threats stimulated the development of personal protective equipment. The 20th century has become an era of large-scale technological threats. Work at harmful enterprises of the rapidly developing chemical industry, radioactive production and nuclear reactors required qualitatively new measures to ensure safety. There are types of gas masks that can not be used on the battlefield, but quite effective in a peaceful environment.
For example, a worker cleaning or repairing a container that cannot be breathed puts on a mask equipped with a long hose into which clean air is supplied.
In other cases, depending on the nature of the pollution, you can use ordinary respirators that protect against dust dispersions. In essence, this is also, albeit very simplified and cheaper, but gas masks. The types and purpose of protective equipment have become more diverse, and the universal devices used by the military are too expensive to be manufactured for civilian purposes.
It is not difficult to distinguish the types of gas masks according to their outlines. Unlike the filtering ones, which have removable boxes of a relatively small size, attached either directly to the mask, or with a corrugated hose connected to it, the insulating one is equipped with a rather capacious tank with compressed oxygen. The use of the latter requires serious preparation, the design is complicated by a gearbox with a valve and a cylinder with a carbon dioxide absorber. In addition, an insulating gas mask is meaningless to use without the protection of the whole body, which provides a hermetic suit made of special rubber. Modern poisons penetrate the skin.