Like we saidbefore, even if you're sporting the most high-end diving helmet you can only really work underwater down to 100m. After that, things get very dark and scary, what with all light stopping at 200m and crippling pressures setting in. If you want to function below that, it's less about how to "successorize" and more how to turn yourself into a human submarine. Developed in the late 1960s, the JIM Suit took deep-sea diving to a whole new level – both depth-wise and stylistically. Based on earlier old-school diving suits that wouldn't look out of place in aCaptain Nemolithograph, the JIM updated the all-in-one with a dose of clean 60s sci-fi design. Paving the way for what became known as Atmospheric Diving Suits, the JIM was effectively a one-person submarine. Instead of dealing with complicated gas mixtures, freezing cold water and decompression sickness, you could breath regular air, surface quickly and dress casually inside, with a thick wool jumper being the garment of choice among users.The original suit measured 6'6" and featured eight movable joints so you could bend your arms and legs. Built for work on deep-sea oil facilities, it first saw action in 1974, when it was used to recover lost oil tanker chains in the Canary Islands. Two years later, JIM suits were used on an extreme dive in the Arctic – working on an oil well at a depth of 275m for six hours. In 1979, American oceanographer Sylvia Earle (that's her at the top) set a new record in the JIM Suit, descending to a depth of 381m before detaching from the ship to walk across the sea floor. With only a thin communication line connecting her to a submersible, she strolled along the bottom for two and a half hours – the deepest such walk before or since.The JIM Suit attained underwater fashion icon status in For Your Eyes Only in the early 80s, but by then its days were numbered. More advanced suits like theWASP,Newt, andSPIDERwere taking over, with built-in propulsion systems allowing workers to zoom around underwater – negating the need for oil companies to build underwater walkways. By 1990, the JIM had paraded on the undersea catwalk for the last time. Future suits may be more advanced, but few will ever be as stylish. CHRIS HATHERILL is co-director ofsuper/collider
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