Gosport Tube Assembly

The Gosport tube was a speaking funnel connected via rubber tubes to ear plates which were fitted inside a pupil's helmet. It allowed the flying instructor in a tandem open cockpit to speak and give their pupil instructions while in the air. Before its introduction, verbal instruction had been impossible.

It was invented by flying instructor Robert Raymond Smith-Barry at the School of Special Flying opened at Gosport in 1917. The part of the assembly displayed here is the pupil's receiving apparatus.