Diving History

Introduction

Prehistoric and Ancient Times

Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Modern Age

20th Century

Introduction
Ever since the very beginning, man has been curious to discover what is hidden in the depths of the sea. Many and varied inventions and artifacts have been used throughout the centuries in an attempt to discover this; however only since the mid 20th C. has this sport become popular.

Prehistoric and Ancient Times
There are indications that in prehistoric times underwater diving was put into practice in order to reach the great shell deposits (many of which live various meters under the sea’s surface) that have been found in the Baltic Sea and on the coast of Portugal. This proves that primitive man, unless he was prepared to wait for low tide to collect them, was forced to dive to the places where they were buried. The Polynesian tribes also engaged in diving since time immemorial. These tribes used a primitive but practical sort of submarine goggle, made of a wooden frame that held a transparent sheet of tortoise shell.
Among the peoples of Ancient Times, the first news of submersion practices is dated 168 B.C. when divers were used to recover the treasure from the palace that Perseus, the last king of Macedonia (Greece), would throw into the sea. In Aristotle’s Problems two types of submersion devices are mentioned. One of them is the “lebeta” (Greek) an antecedent of the diving bell, consisting of a great metallic chamber that is placed upside down in the water and which allows a volume of air, according to its capacity, to be imprisoned inside. One or more divers place themselves on the inside and leave the bell for short periods to continue the dive. The other device mentioned consists of a respiratory tube very similar to the present day snorkel.

Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Although the Middle Ages had little to do with the sea, it is during this stage with such scarce marine activity that we find the extraordinary diver Nicholas, known as “the fish”, whose submarine prowess was immortalized by Federico Schiller in his ballad The Diver and also as a character in Cervantes’ Quixote, named “Peje Nicolao”.

In the Renaissance, the multi sided genius Leonardo da Vinci designed a couple of diving devices. The first consisted of a simple tube, similar to the present day snorkel. The other design shows a helmet with goggles and a respiratory tube in a sort of hood with spikes, acting as a natural defense mechanism against possible predators. One type shows a large air canister placed over the diver’s chest connected to a mask covering part of the face. The most perfect design consists of a complete diver’s suit, classified by other authors as “equipment that covers all vital necessities and special demands that a man could have under water.”

Modern Age
In the mid-18th Century, discoveries and inventions, that would allow divers to descend to lower depths for longer periods of time, began to surface. It is during this period that diving bells gained acceptance, such as Jean Barrié’s “Patache” (1940) or Halley’s diving bell (1960), which had an air supply from the surface.
The bell’s subsequent evolution is owed to Augustus Siebe, whom some call the “Father of Modern Diving”, who reduced the bell’s size until it had become a helmet that received air from a pump on the water’s surface. In 1837 Siebe added a waterproof suit that kept the diver’s body “dry” and which he called armored diving suit. That is how the classic diver’s gear came about and which, with only a few minor changes, is still around today.

In 1860, an officer of the French marine, Auguste Denayrouze, and a mining engineer, Benedict Rouguayrol, got together to build a lighter device than the armored diving suit, which was made of a metal canister holding air at 30 or 40 atmospheres of pressure with a rudimentary regulator and a hose which supplied air from the surface and which could be disconnected for short periods of time while the diver continued breathing from the air supply in the tank. This was called an "Aerophere".

This device was not widely used as it restricted the diver’s independence and did not have an adequate system of vision. In 1879 Henry Fleuss developed a diving suit that worked using combinations of 50% to 60% oxygen. The first dive lasted one hour and given its success, convinced Siebe Gorman and Co., in London, to manufacture the suit.

20th Century
In the 30’s many of the elements essential to the development of modern diving were created. These include fins or flippers (1935), snorkels (1938) and the face mask covering eyes and nose, patented in 1938. In 1933 a French investigator Le Prier patents the divers’ suit that gives the diver more freedom, thanks to the tank containing air at high pressure (150 atmospheres) and the clearer vision provided by the face mask. However, this device did not have a consumption control system, therefore still restricting the diver’s freedom to a considerable extent.

In 1943 a team made up of Jacques-Yves Cousteau (a French naval lieutenant), Emile Gagnan (an engineer) and a young athlete Frédéric Dumas, tested a device in waters off the Blue Coast which would go on to become the device so many generations had dreamt about. It involved a self-contained apparatus whose main feature was the regulator that supplied the diver with air at ambient pressure, which was compressed at great pressure in a tank.

This system gave divers the chance to descend to depths never before imagined by man, using an acceptable breathing system. Actually, the apparatus is only part of the invention, as Cousteau used a mask covering eyes and nose and rubber fins, and compensated the natural floatability of the human body with a belt containing lead pellets.

Since then, progress in the understanding of the physiology and the technique that allows man to breathe gaseous combinations has allowed divers to continue descending to depths of 400 meters.