Who do you go to if you want to develop the most efficient swimming propulsion device ever conceived? Darpa, of course. That's the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They bring you simple new innovations, like say, the internet. Anyway, they've put their minds to work and developed a cool way to send the Defense Dept's swimmers through the water faster. Thinking a better kind of fins? Think again. Check out the video below.
What a load of crap, no one at Darpa had anything to do with INVENTING this concept, they stole it from the guy who did, way back in the early 70's, after he tried to sell it to the military back then.
ReplyDeleteI was a college swimmer at that time and the inventor, Calvin Gongwer, showed me his, and let me try it. It was fantastic and the only difference between the version he let me use back then and the one Darpa supposedly spent millions to develop, is that his was not made of modern composts, it was made of metal and wood.
Don't believe me, go look at his patent for yourself:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=PId9AAAAEBAJ&pg=PA3&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false
He set all sorts of swimming records with it like pulling a person on a surf board from Catalina to the mainland with it in record time, and by my College standards, he was an old man by that time. Well he was probably 50, but that looked awful old to me at that time.
When I tried it I felt like I was jet powered and with it on a kid who could practically not even swim could beat an olympic swimmer without even trying. It was fast and effortless to use except that it was tough to turn. His version did not look as comfortable but it sure worked. It floated too.