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In 1962 three men escaped from Alcatraz Prison in an inflatable raft they had manufactured from rain coats, below is an extract from Alcatrazhistory.com

 

"while Morris modified an accordion-like musical instrument called a concertina, which would be used to rapidly inflate the raft."

 

Hopefully it was a cheap one !

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Once, after setting up a tent, I inflated an air mattress with a foot-operated bellows while sitting and playing my concertina. It immediately occurred to me that there must be a better way, to accomplish both with one bellows. That was 25 years ago. It hasn’t moved beyond the theoretical stage yet.

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1 hour ago, David Barnert said:

Once, after setting up a tent, I inflated an air mattress with a foot-operated bellows while sitting and playing my concertina. It immediately occurred to me that there must be a better way, to accomplish both with one bellows. That was 25 years ago. It hasn’t moved beyond the theoretical stage yet.

That's a great tale; you only had to attach one end of squeeze box to foot pump, adapt it a bit, then you would want to keep inflating and deflating the mattress for sake of playing more tunes in the process! [Anglo system you get different note in our out of bellows of course]. Then call it the " airbed suite"! in G!!😁

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On 1/10/2022 at 9:34 PM, David Barnert said:

I am a (retired) anesthesiologist, so a while back, before I retired, a friend sent me this:

Clever. And what anesthesiologist--what any kind of a physician today--wears a head reflector? Talk about archaic but lasting cartoon symbolism!

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9 hours ago, Mike Franch said:

what any kind of a physician today--wears a head reflector? Talk about archaic but lasting cartoon symbolism!

ENTs were the last ones I remember using them, perhaps in the 1980s, before the advent of fiberoptics. Up on the forehead like that was the resting position. The round part was a concave mirror with a hole in the center. To use it, the doctor flipped it down in front of their eye and looked through the hole while shining a light (originally a candle) toward the mirror. This focused the light in the same direction the doc was looking (down the patient’s throat, or wherever).

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