As intrepid climbers, they were denied their moment of glory when they were forced to turn back just 300ft below the summit of Everest, three days before Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay conquered the mountain. But more than 60 years later Tom Bourdillon, the British rocket scientist who designed the breathing equipment for the historic expedition, and his climbing partner Charles Evans have found recognition as pioneers in another field.

The respirators they used are being redeveloped to help sufferers of one of the world’s deadliest diseases.

A British researcher has refined Bourdillon’s “closed circuit” design to aid not only climbers, but patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) — a lung condition that kills 3 million people a year and is predicted by the World Health Organisation to be the third leading cause of death by 2030.

Bourdillon failed in his attempt only because the equipment developed a mysterious fault in the extreme cold. He returned to camp and two days later watched Hillary and Tensing set off with “open-circuit” breathing sets, also of his design, that were inferior but more reliable.

From the Archive: Everest conquered

A message was received from the British Mount Everest Expedition that E. P. Hillary and the Sherpa Tensing Bhutia reached the summit of the mountain, 29,002ft. high, on May 29

• Leading article

• First account of ascent

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The fault, which has only recently been solved, meant that Bourdillon’s closed-circuit design was ignored by climbers for 50 years despite having an important advantage over the open-circuit system. Bourdillon and Evans were able to climb at 930ft per hour - double the rate of Hillary and Tensing - because their respirators were much more efficient.

Roger McMorrow, Smiths Medical research fellow at University College London and an avid climber who revisited Bourdillon’s designs, realised that the abandonment of Bourdillon’s equipment was an oversight. “I’d seen on some films the [open-circuit] oxygen systems they were using and I realised they were grossly inefficient,” he told The Times.

Climbers need breathing equipment at high altitude because oxygen is so scarce that they gasp for breath when sitting still, let alone when trying to move. COPD sufferers have a similar difficulty getting enough oxygen because of blockages preventing them from drawing enough breath.

Both climbers and COPD patients use simple but reliable open-circuit respirators, which spray oxygen from a canister into a mask to supplement air drawn from the atmosphere. It is inefficient because most of the oxygen inhaled is not absorbed by the lungs but expelled in the outward breath and lost to the atmosphere.

With a closed system, the oxygen from wearers’ outward breath is recycled. The expelled air is scrubbed of carbon dioxide and returned to the mask. Oxygen levels therefore remain constant no matter how hard wearers breathe.

The inefficiency of an open-circuit system is exacerbated when wearers take exercise because their breaths are shallower and more frequent. Even if they increase the flow of oxygen from the canister it is difficult to match the levels possible in a closed-circuit system.

Mr McMorrow successfully tested his closed-circuit prototype on an expedition to Everest last year at Smiths Medical High Altitude Laboratory at Namche Bazaar, Nepal, at 3,400m (11,154ft). He also discovered, in earlier tests on Cho Oyu, the world’s sixth highest peak, the probable reason why Bourdillon’s device failed. Evans changed the carbon dioxide absorber midway through the climb when the weather was so cold that his breath would have frozen inside the device. The system remains warm while in use because of heat generated by chemical reactions, but once cold it is difficult to restart.

Jeremy Russell, head of research and development for Smiths Medical, is now working on ways to miniaturise the prototype so that it can be issued to patients, a process that could take as little as three years. Patients with COPD often deteriorate because they are unable to take exercise to keep themselves fit, he said. “If you can break this cycle then it will enable people to slow down deterioration and have an improved lifestyle.”

George Band, 79, who was the youngest person on the 1953 Everest expedition, said that Bourdillon, who died in a climbing accident aged 32 in 1956, was passionate about his closed-circuit design. “One of the tragedies was that he had worked so hard on the [closed-circuit] set,” he told The Times. “They climbed 1,300ft in an hour and a half. It showed that you could go like a bomb.”

Mr Band believes that Bourdillon wanted to go further but was dissuaded by Evans, a more experienced climber, who told his companion: “Tom, if you go on, you may never see Jennifer [Bourdillon’s wife] again.” Mr Band said that the pair’s success in climbing higher than anyone had done before was “totally overshadowed” by Hillary and Tensing’s triumph, which was reported exclusively by The Times.

The revival of Bourdillon’s respirator was a happy ending, he said. “He would have been very thrilled to learn today that his research on the equipment wasn’t going to waste.”

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