David Clark Company, Inc. 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 a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the second-List of cities i ...

, 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 (DCC) 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 outsid ...

s for

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

and

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

.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 Be ...

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 rocket-powered aircraft. It was operated by the United States Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as part of the X-plane series of experimental aircraft. The X-15 set speed an ...

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

Project Gemini Project Gemini () was NASA's second human spaceflight program. Conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo, Gemini started in 1961 and concluded in 1966. The Gemini spacecraft carried a two-astronaut crew. Ten Gemini crews and 16 individual ...

. It also participated in team effort to develop the Integrated Life Support System for F-15 jet fighter and

B-1 bomber The Rockwell B-1 Lancer is a supersonic variable-sweep wing, heavy bomber used by the United States Air Force. It is commonly called the "Bone" (from "B-One"). It is one of three strategic bombers serving in the U.S. Air Force fleet along with ...

crew. David Clark worked closely with the laboratory of

Earl Wood Earl Howard Wood (January 1, 1912 – March 18, 2009) was an American cardiopulmonary physiologist who helped invent the G-suit, brought heart catheterization into a clinical reality and introduced dynamic volumetric computed tomography for t ...

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 pool ...

. 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 colleague's 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 service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

high-altitude aircraft (

Lockheed U-2 The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "''Dragon Lady''", is an American single-jet engine, high altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It provides day ...

and

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

) 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 The Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES), or "pumpkin suit", is a full pressure suit that Space Shuttle crews began wearing after STS-65, for the ascent and entry portions of flight. The suit is a direct descendant of the U.S. Air Force high-altitu ...

(ACES). This was adopted for the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially 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. Its official program na ...

program, replacing DCC's (partial pressure) S1032

Launch Entry Suit The Launch Entry Suit (LES), known as the "pumpkin suit", is a partial-pressure suit that was worn by all Space Shuttle crews for the ascent and entry portions of flight from STS-26 (1988) to STS-65 (1994). It was completely phased out by STS-88 ...

(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

F-22 Raptor The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is an American single-seat, twin-engine, all-weather stealth tactical fighter aircraft developed for the United States Air Force (USAF). As the result of the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program, th ...

. 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/space suit systems which will be required to satisfy emerging manned 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 Oceaneering International, Inc. is a subsea engineering and applied technology company based in Houston, Texas, U.S. that provides engineered services and hardware to customers who operate in marine, space, and other environments. Oceaneering's ...

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 Red Bull Stratos was a high altitude skydiving project involving Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner. On 14 October 2012, Baumgartner flew approximately into the stratosphere over New Mexico, United States, in a Gas balloon, helium balloon befor ...

project, with which Felix Baumgartner performed a record-breaking free fall from a high-altitude balloon on 14 October 2012.Red Bull Stratos Project
/ref>

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