At the end of the 18th century German companies were dredging for amber in the Baltic Sea. Divers helped out by searching the ocean floor for these precious stones. You can imagine which way they had to look the whole day: DOWN. The divers used conventional French regulator equipment for this job and started complaining after a while. The heavy French equipment was not really suitable for this job and many divers had back and neck problems.

To help them out, Ludwig von Bremen developed the amber diver equipment. The equipment was based on the half helmet developed by Rouquayrol and Denayrouze and was also used in combination with a improved regulator, based on their design. The half helmet had 4 lights and was attached to the divers suit.


Sketch of the amber diving equipment. The broad blue line in the middle is the extra weight that was fixed to the helmet.


Press cutting from around 1870 showing a diver in Von Bremen's dress, about to descend.

The helmet did not have an opportunity to operate an exhaust valve with the head so a valve for manual use was attached. The diver breathed through a mouthpiece and the exhaled air escaped through a lip valve. The helmet was quite heavy and even additional weight was fixed to it. This equipment was perfect to search for amber but was not suitable for any other diving job. Only a couple of years later Von Bremen stopped production and concentrated on the regular regulator helmet. 

In 1870 Von Bremen came up with a regulator helmet that was identical to the regulator helmet Denayrouze developed 5 years before that. The helmet has a corselet and a bonnet that are attached by 3 wing nuts. The suit is held in the middle. This way you get a perfect watertight seal. On the right side you see the elbow that leads to the regulator on the divers back. On the inside of the helmet this elbow leads to a mouthpiece through which the diver can breath. On this helmet also the exhaust valve has to be operated by hand and not with the head. Another German producer (Clouth) copied this helmet also. It was used by the German navy for many years until the French (regular) 3 bolt came in the picture.