David Clark Company, Inc. (DCC) is an American manufacturing company. DCC designs and manufactures a wide variety of aerospace and industrial protective equipment, including pressure-space suit systems, anti-G suits, headsets, and several medical/safety products. DCC has been involved in the design and manufacture of air-space crew protective equipment since 1941, beginning with the design and development of the first standard anti-G suits and valves used by allied fighter pilots during World War II.

Facilities

Located in

Worcester, Massachusetts Worcester ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Massachusetts, second-most populous city in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the list of United States cities by population, 113th most populous city in the United States. Named after Worcester ...

, the company was founded in 1935 by David M. Clark. It started in the textile business with the development of unique knitted materials for specialty undergarments and over time evolved to making aerospace and communications related products. The David Clark Company is housed in a four-story building containing approximately of working area.

Signature products

Headsets

The company is best known for noise attenuating communication headset systems featuring boom microphones.

G-suits

The company has designed and manufactured pressure/space suits and

life support system A life-support system is the combination of equipment that allows survival in an environment or situation that would not support that life in its absence. It is generally applied to systems supporting human life in situations where the outside ...

s for

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

and U.S. Air Force.Statement of Lt. Gen. Otto J. Glasser, Deputy Chief of Staff, Research and Development, Headquarters, U.S. Air Force
Department of Defense Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1972, pp. 706, 835. It developed partial pressure suits for

Bell X-1 The Bell X-1 (Bell Model 44) is a rocket engine–powered aircraft, designated originally as the XS-1, and was a joint National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics– U.S. Army Air Forces– U.S. Air Force supersonic research project built by B ...

rocket-powered research aircraft in the 1940s, and full pressure suits for the D558-2 and

North American X-15 The North American X-15 is a Hypersonic speed, hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft which was operated by the United States Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the List of X-planes, X-plane series of ...

research aircraft in the 1950s. DCC's X-15 suit design became the basis for all of its subsequent full pressure suits, including the spacesuits worn by astronauts for the first U.S. extravehicular activities (EVA) conducted during NASA's

Project Gemini Project Gemini () was the second United States human spaceflight program to fly. Conducted after the first American crewed space program, Project Mercury, while the Apollo program was still in early development, Gemini was conceived in 1961 and ...

. It also participated in team effort to develop the Integrated Life Support System for F-15 jet fighter and B-1 bomber crews. David Clark worked closely with the laboratory of Earl Wood at the Mayo Clinic when developing the early

G-suit A g-suit, or anti-''g'' suit, is a flight suit worn by aviators and astronauts who are subject to high levels of acceleration force ( g). It is designed to prevent a black-out and g-LOC (g-induced loss of consciousness) caused by the blood poo ...

. The goal was to prevent blackout during high-G forces experienced during dive bombing maneuvers. With the physiologic principles of blackout during high G-forces worked out by Wood and colleagues, the G-activated single pressure suit utilizing air bladders, first released in 1943 with improvements to follow in 1944, provided what was considered to be a significant advantage for the Allied forces. Of key importance was Wood and colleagues' recognition that gravitationally induced loss of consciousness (GLOC) was due to relative loss of arterial pressure pushing blood to the head rather than a loss of venous return. Since 1946, DCC's continuous pressure suit research and development efforts, sponsored largely by the Department of Defense to support its

USAF The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

high-altitude aircraft (

Lockheed U-2 The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed the "''Dragon Lady''", is an American single-engine, high–altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) since the 1950s. Designed for all- ...

and

SR-71 The Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" is a retired Range (aeronautics), long-range, high-altitude, Mach number, Mach 3+ military strategy, strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed and manufactured by the American aerospace company Lockheed Co ...

) programs, resulted in the late 1980s development of a new-generation pressure suit. The result was the S1034 Pilot's Protective Assembly (PPA). The S1034 PPA has since become the USAF and DoD standard pressure suit and served as the basis for NASA's S1035 Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES). This was adopted for the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

program, replacing DCC's (partial pressure) S1032 Launch Entry Suit (LES). Both the S1034 PPA and S1035 ACES continue to be used by the USAF and NASA. Throughout the 1990s, DCC conducted engineering design and development activities for the USAF Advanced Technology Anti-G Suit (ATAGS) program. This included the design and analysis of advanced ATAGS/Combat Edge vest designs for the

F-22 Raptor The Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor is an American twin-engine, jet-powered, all-weather, supersonic stealth fighter aircraft. As a product of the United States Air Force's Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program, the aircraft was de ...

. DCC designed and developed the Tactical Flyer's Ensemble (United States Patent 7,076,808). Research has also been conducted to develop the next generation of advanced pressure/spacesuit systems that will be required to satisfy emerging crewed space exploration requirements. This included the development of the S1035-X ("D-suit") in the late 1990s and the follow-on Enhanced Mobility ACES circa 2005. In 2008, DCC, along with its subsidiary, Air-Lock, Inc. of Milford, Connecticut, partnered with Houston, Texas-based Oceaneering Space Systems to develop the Constellation Space Suit System (CSSS) for use on the then-upcoming

Constellation program The Constellation program (abbreviated CxP) was a crewed spaceflight program developed by NASA, the space agency of the United States, from 2005 to 2009. The major goals of the program were "completion of the International Space Station" and a " ...

. In 2010, they designed, developed, and fabricated pressure suits utilized on the Red Bull Stratos project, with which Felix Baumgartner performed a record-breaking free fall from a high-altitude balloon on 14 October 2012.Red Bull Stratos Project
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References

External links

{{commons category
David Clark Company home page
Headphones manufacturers Manufacturing companies based in Massachusetts Manufacturing companies established in 1935 1935 establishments in Massachusetts Audio equipment manufacturers of the United States