"Man's Now Going to Go to the Moon": Professor Frank Cotton and Australia’s Contribution to the Origin’s of the Partial Pressure Suit
- Paper ID
IAF-96-IAA-2.1.08
- author
- company
Powerhouse Museum
- country
Australia
- year
1996
- abstract
The history of pressure suit development in the United States is well known, but recently- recovered artefacts and archival material from the University of Sydney, Australia, have brought to light the forgotten aero-medical work of Professor Frank Cotton, Research Professor in the Department of Physiology during the Second World War, to whom American pressure suit research owes a great, if indirect, debt. Prof. Cotton's fundamental physiological research and his practical work on the development of the first pneumatic 'anti- g' suit paved the way for the development of the first US partial pressure suits. Professor Cotton's war time aero-medical work has remained largely unknown until now, due the security classification which surrounded his original research and his early death in 1955, which prevented him from publishing his work, as he had intended. This paper will present the results of preliminary research into the archival and artefact material from the University of Sydney. It will outline the scope and significance of Professor Cotton's work in relation to anti-g suit development during the Second World War, the results of which was shared with the United States and Canada, and attempt to place it in its context in the history of pressure development.