Ferdinand Petzl was a caver who designed many new and innovative ideas for the caving fraternity and later, the general world of mountaineering. Outdoor folk from the latter part of the 1900s will forever remember the Petzl Zoom headtorch which just about everybody had at the time – they must have made millions of them. The Petzl Shunt seems to have appeared around 1990, designed as an ascender for cavers and the, then new, industry of Industrial Rope Access, much used in North Sea oil exploration. It works on a simple system whereby two metal bars squeeze the rope when weighted; the more you pull, the more they squeeze. Unfortunately, the system became controversial pretty early on since the simple release lever could be pulled accidently in some circumstances making it potentially unsafe. Check out the Petzl website if you need to know more. The version we have here is an early circa 1995/6 version which was kindly donated by Bob Smith, one time leader of the Arrochar Mountain Rescue Team.