... was made out of a stop sign?

   but first, in the odd chance that some people haven't heard of a

backplate:    Say, what is a backplate?

   good question!  a backplate is a piece of metal that a diver straps to

his or her back with a harness:

     the backplate then serves as the platform upon which a wing

(really an  inflatable bladder or bladders, so named because they

look like wings when deployed under water) and the tank(s) are

mounted.  thus:

    the backplate/wings combination (abbreviated BP/W) is the basis of

the Hogarthian and DIR systems (discussed in my previous entry),

and has been adopted by the cave diving community and 

wreck/technical diving folk all over the world.

   the backplate has many advantages over conventional BC's, mainly,

less drag, more streamlined, better distribution of weight over your

back, and a better "center of trim" for lack of a better word, making

maintaining vertical trim much easier than with a conventional BC.

also, they are truly infinitely adjustable, making a BP/W about the

"best fit" for each and every diver (this is because the harness can

be adjusted precisely to fit the specific diver).

   so who invented the backplate?  none other than Greg Flanagan

as a college junior at the University of Florida, Gainesville

(my alma mater, if i may say so myself), way back in 1979.

  actually, he did make that first backplate out of a road sign,

but i don't know if it was a stop sign or not:

I made my first back plate in early 1979 from a surplus aluminum road sign

of unknown alloy. I traced the outline from the solid center section of the Scuba

Pro BCP onto a paper stencil and transferred this onto the aluminum. I next cut out

the aluminum and had a single parallel set of bends, about 2" apart, made in the center

of the plate, running from top to bottom, forming a sort of flat bottomed "V", into

which I drilled two holes (one top/one bottom), which were used to bolt the plate to

extended studs on a set of bands on double 72s. I then proceeded to beat the aluminum

around the curvature of the tanks with a sledge hammer, soon discovering that aluminum

alloy is pretty tough material, taking several hours to conform the aluminum to the tanks.

The webbing off a Navy harness was then attached through a series of slots cut in the metal

and the first back plate was born. I used this first back plate on both Double 72s and Double

80s throughout the rest of Sheck's cave course with awesome results. Balance was so easy

and my cave diving technique was so improved that I became the envy of my classmates who

continued to struggle with their belly-bags.

Source

   Flanagan went on to make backplates for a number of cave divers,

including Sheck Exley and Bill "Hogarth" Main, who, particulalry

Main, helped standarize the backplate for cave diving.

   Flanagan's design has been virtually unchanged to this day, including

the position of the harness slots.  However, Flanagan never got

around to getting a patent for the backplate.  And the rest, as they

say, is history.