June 1953: Oxygen breathing kit for climbers on Mount Everest

When, on 29 May 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain, their achievement was rightly hailed as a triumph of human endurance and skill.

But alongside the planning, skill and mountaineer’s luck that helped them to the top of Mount Everest, their expedition also made practical use of some of the most advanced technologies available to climbers at the time.

In June 1953, just a few weeks after their historic success, The Engineer took an in-depth look at a key item of equipment: the specially designed oxygen breathing apparatus that was used by the climbers to overcome the effects of the rarefied atmosphere at high altitudes.

As the article reports, the system was developed for the expedition by UK firm Normalair Ltd, which specialised in manufacturing high-altitude life-support equipment for the aerospace industry. The firm still exists as a division of Honeywell Aerospace in Yeovil.