Word: diver
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...hero holding a huge scythe in the middle of a Riviera chateau draw ing room. Harold Wonder (Jerry Orbach) has an albatross complex and a symbolic knife at his throat. While his two children lie asleep upstairs, his wife is out cuckolding him with a Negro skin-diver, or so he thinks. Harold, in a skull-popping panic, half-dials phones, swigs champagne from a bottle, runs to the door with his scythe and roars out bloody maledictions on "the Goddamn spade frogman." In a performance marvelously sustained at the pitch of brilliance, Jerry Orbach sprays comic vitriol without ever...
...belt or an armpit holster under his coat. But he obviously enjoys danger. His once cherubic face is now deeply lined, and his hair is flecked with grey, but his sturdy arms and legs are hard with the muscles of a sportsman. He is an inveterate hunter, horseman, scuba diver and deep-sea fisherman. He introduced water-skiing to Jordan, then took up kiting. Above all, he loves speed, and at the wheel of his silver Porsche 911 is usually a winner in Jordanian sports-car events. To the horror of his security men, he is also addicted to motorcycle...
...limitation for scuba divers is not how deep they can go but how long they can stay under. Conventional compressed-air breathing units, which weigh 36 Ibs., are generally exhausted after one hour. Soon, according to this month's Skin Diver magazine, aquanauts will be able to submerge for six or even eight hours at a time with a back pack that weighs only half as much as usual...
...secret is liquid air-a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen supercooled to - 318°F. It is pumped into vacuum-insulated Dewar tanks, sophisticated thermos bottles that protect the icy liquid from the warmth of the surrounding water and at the same time keep the diver's back and shoulders from freezing. From the tanks, the liquid air is piped through warming coils that heat it until it expands into breathable gas. Only hazard: since liquid air allows the diver to stay under far longer, he must surface slowly, in stages, to avoid the bends...
...breathing system is called cryogenic scuba, for the science of supercooling, which has been used to fuel spacecraft with liquid oxygen and, in medicine, to freeze everything from ulcers and tumors to tonsils and cataracts. The new scuba rig was pioneered by Jim Woodberry, 23, a Miami diver who has successfully tested a prototype for a total of 400 hours at depths up to 200 ft. He plans to have it on the market before year's end. Anticipated price: $250 to $300 for the apparatus, plus $3.50 for each refill of liquid...