History of decompression research and development range of commercial, military and recreational diving. The first recorded experimental work related to decompression was conducted by Robert Boyle, who subjected experimental animals to reduced ambient pressure by use of a primitive vacuum pump. In the earliest experiments the subjects died from asphyxiation, but in later experiments, signs of what was later to become known as decompression sickness were observed. Later, when technological advances allowed the use of pressurisation of mines and caissons to exclude water ingress, miners were observed to present symptoms of what would become known as caisson disease, the bends, and decompression sickness. Once it was
Ratio decompression unacceptably high risk of decompression sickness. However, the technique has undoubted value in emergency situations where a dive plan is "blown" for one reason or another, and a personal dive computer is not in use. Although to date no independent forensic review of ratio decompression as a decompression algorithm has been conducted, in his book "Deco for Divers", Mark Powell considers ratio decompression, and analyses it in slightly simplistic "flattening the curve" terms, illustrating it by way of comparison to certain more traditional models. Nonetheless, given the limited amount of forensic research available on any decompression algorithm, it is difficult