The Smith-Clarke Respirator

The iron lung, or cabinet respirator, devised in 1929, was a life-saving device. But early models were alarming and uncomfortable for patients, inconvenient for nurses, and expensive. Credit for inventing the iron lung must go to Philip Drinker of Harvard University, USA, but it was the chairman of a Warwickshire Hospital Management Committee in the UK who, in the 1950s, made this device vastly more user-friendly. Captain G T Smith-Clarke (1884–1960) became chairman of Coventry Group HMC in 1951, after retiring from the Alvis Motor Company. He had already improved existing medical devices, and his work on iron lungs resulted in a new model that eventually replaced most of the older types used in the UK.