They have been saving lives for nearly 150 years, but even though no one has ever given them an award for heroism, tens of thousands of people have been given the credit and provided all the proof necessary that they do the job for which they are designed. A lot of water has swept over life jackets in the years since that first act of Congress. Life jackets have been there when it has counted, aboard sinking passenger liners, though several wars, on countless pleasure cruises, and amid storms on the oceans and great lakes. And everywhere they've been worn, they've brought people back alive. Today's life jacket is the product of a considerable amount of research and development.
Life jackets are now models of ingenuity in comparison to the original ones.
But when Congress got involved, a gradual life preserver development process began. Legislation passed in 1852 set the first carriage requirement for life preservers and also created a Board of Supervising Inspectors. Through the following years, the Board determined that inflated life preservers developed in the 19th century were not as dependable as uninflated types. They also voted to ban tin or metal components from use in life preservers because those pieces might be damaged through carelessness or oxidation. The cork-block type became something of the standard against which all other life preservers were measured.