Haldane and his fellow researchers would expose themselves to gas and test its effects. The scientist’s lab was in his home, and he employed his daughter Naomi, then a teenager, as a research assistant, historian Steve Sturdy told the BBC. Haldane and his team were able to identify the gas used at Ypres as chlorine by examining discolored metal buttons on soldiers' uniforms.Īfter he returned to his home in Oxford, England, he started experimenting to find out what would keep the gas out. His job was to ID the kind of gas that was being used. Thirty years into his career, in 1915, Haldane was sent to Ypres after the battle, the BBC writes.
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He had also done previous work on how to protect miners from gas using respirators, according to Jerry Chester for the BBC.īut Haldane’s other big contribution didn’t just endanger birds: It endangered him and his family.
Smithsonian has written about Haldane before, because he was the man who devised the idea of using canaries and other small animals in coal mines to detect odorless, deadly gases. He taught at several universities and developed medical remedies for common industrial ailments. But he wasn’t a practicing doctor: instead he was a medical researcher, writes the Science Museum in London. Haldane, born on this day in 1860 in Edinburgh, Scotland, got his medical degree in 1884. One of these scientists was John Scott Haldane, whose spectacular moustache (see above) would likely have prevented him from getting a good seal when wearing a gas mask. Unprepared for German forces to use chlorine gas as a weapon, many Allied soldiers suffocated, unprotected, during the Battle of Ypres in 1915.īut they gained protection thanks to the efforts of scientists who worked on the home front. The story has been updated to reflect Morgan’s contributions.
In fact, Garrett Morgan, a Black inventor based in Ohio, filed a patent for a gas mask in 1914, a year before Haldane started researching his device.
Editor’s Note, May 11, 2022: This article previously suggested that John Haldane was the first person to invent a gas mask.
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