The First non-military scuba system arrived in the U.S. in 1949.
The third Aqualung was purchased by the Zoology Department, UCLA.
In the summer of 1950 it was taken, along with one triple cylinder rig,
to the campus of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California by Conrad Limbaugh.
Within months, a small group of would be divers emerged from among geology, oceanography and biology students at Scripps.
A few years went by and in 1953 there was a fellow at Scripps, Stewart. He had three
people come to him who wanted to get certified as diving instructors. One of them
was Nick Icorn, the other one was Conrad (Connie) Limbaugh, and the third was Al
Tillman. Nick Icorn was a draftsman-engineer of sorts. Connie Limbaugh was a
writer and photographer making a name for himself in New York. Al Tillman was an
assistant professor in physical education at Los Angeles University in Los Angeles,
CA. They went to Stewart and all got certified as instructors.
Connie Limbaugh is probably best known in diving circles, along with
Andreas B. Rechnitzer, as the two that drafted the first safety training syllabus and
scuba skills course for University of California scientific divers and Los Angeles
County Parks and Recreation. Connie was considered one of the leading experts in
the technical field of diving. Connie Limbaugh died tragically in 1960, while cave
diving in France.
Al Tillman was involved with the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation
department. That, in addition to being an assistant professor. He was in the Los
Angeles County Instructor Organization for Scuba Divers. It was really considered
to be the ultimate. If you could become an instructor with the Los Angeles County,
you were really a top notch instructor. This was in the late -50s and early -60s. All
the way up into the -70s, Los Angeles County organization was really considered
the number one organization in the world in regards to scuba instructors
Nick Icorn was involved with the YMCA's. He was also in Los Angeles
County Parks and Recreation, so YMCA took up the sport of scuba Diving in
1959. YMCA had their own instructors. There was a difference though. All the
scuba instructors of YMCA worked for nothing, they did it for free. All the L.A.
County instructors, by-in-large, charged for scuba instruction. In 1965 Icorn went
to work for U.S. Divers, and became one of PADI's first employees, after PADI
moved to California. There he wrote several of the training manuals. Icorn later
became PADI's first Executive Director. He is now retired but still active in the
Historical Diving Society - USA.
In and around 1960 a guy named Neal Hess, the Training Director of the
Boston YMCA Sea-Rovers went out to California. He was an accountant and got
involved with Jim Auxire of Skin Diver Magazine. They decided to start something
like the National Ski Patrol Association. It would be the National Scuba Training
Council. Very soon thereafter it became the National Instructors Scuba
Association.
By the way, at that time, if you owned a dive shop, you had your own
instructor card that you gave out. It said "SeaSports Scuba Diver." This is to
certify that Joe Doe has completed a course in scuba Diving. The name of the
owner of the dive store would be on the card, and he signed it. You could then
show that card wherever you wanted to go scuba diving. Nobody really cared as
nobody was making any money anyway. So the card was really just a memento.
If you went into a dive shop back then and wanted to buy a regulator, a cylinder
and what not, they would be the first ones to sell it all to you, regardless of your
knowledge in how to use it. The dive store owner may suggest that he could teach
you how to dive. If you the customer said, "no I just want to buy the equipment,"
so be it. After all it was a hundred dollars or so in the cash till.
Most of the diving stores of today are quite zealous about checking your
certification before they sell you any equipment. It is a totally different format than
a few years ago. Back then, a scuba course was six lessons at a cost of $18.00
to become a certified diver. There was no such thing as Open Water or Advanced
or any other level of certification. I think all the agencies now
have the concept of Open Water Certification and then a number of advanced
steps.
National Diving Patrol Started in 1960. Shortly thereafter it changed its name
to National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI).
Al Tillman, the spearhead of the organization together with Neal Hess and John C. Jones became the first officers of the agency.
Tillman and Jones along with Gary Howland (top graduate of the first NAUI course) would manage NAUI for the first decade of its existence.
Auxier and Blakeslee of Skin Diver Magazine put up the moneies that was used to promote and organize the first Instructor Course as well as NAUI's startup.
Over time NAUI lost its economic support from Skin Diver Magazine.
Al Tillman is NAUI #0001, Jones is NAUI #0002 and Hess is NAUI #0003.
Jones and Hess have both passed away. Howland is still very active in the industry and owns the Scuba Shop in Florida.
NAUI is still very active and wide spread today.
YMCA is still in existence today as a certifying agency.
Back then, they only offered instructor certification courses.
Many divers were very late getting certified. Ralph Erickson, the president of
PADI, for instance, readily admits that he was scuba diving for several years
before he felt that there was a need to formally learn something more about it. In
his case, in August of 1960, he went through the first NAUI instructor certification held in
Houston, Texas was organized by Neal Hess and directed by Al Tillman and John C. Jones Jr.
That's when Ralph found out that it was very dangerous to ascend and hold your breath.
Also he learned that he could get decompression sickness if he stayed down too long or coming up too fast. Very
fortunate for Ralph, he was diving in Lake Michigan, where the water was very cold
and visibility was not that great either; So most dives were quite shallow and short. Ralph remembers the whole instructor certification course costed $75.00,
but the total trip from Chicago to Houston and back costed somewhere around
$2,000.00, and he was there for a week.
Final exam Friday midnight until about 4:00 A.M.
The final exam consisted of 350 questions, True/False, but one had to
write a paragraph about why you answered true or false.
About 70% of that first ICC graduated and all were considered to be some of the best in North America.
By 5:00 A.M. the group boarded a bus and drove down to Corpus Christi.
Got on a boat, three miles out. Everybody jumped overboard hanging onto all of
their equipment, sank down to 60 feet, put on the gear and came up. That
concluded the test.
Other instructors for that course were Al Tillman, Andreas Rechnitzer, and
Captains Behnke and Bond of the US Navy. Captain Bond was famous for stepping
out of a submarine with a Chief Petty Officer and exhaled all the way to the surface
demonstrating that it was possible to escape from a stranded submarine, at depth,
by this method. This is how a 100 foot emergency swimming ascent was instituted
at the New London Submarine Training center. During training each submariner had
to make a 100 foot ascent by merely exhaling. They were told to go Ho-Ho-Ho all
the way to the surface.
National Association of Skin Diving Schools, at that time National
Association of Skin Diving Stores had Started. NASDS was Started in 1961 by John
Gaffney, who was in charge of advertising at Skin Diving Magazine. He had seen an
opportunity to make a lot of money. So about a year or so after NAUI had been
created, he left Skin Diver to start his own magazine and thus Started NASDS. That
organization was the first one to go around to the various diving stores and get
them signed up on the NASDS program.
Starting in 1966 John Cronin and Ralph Erickson talked intermittently for a
few years thereafter about starting a certification agency. Ralph was tired of
making $18.00 per person on a course, everything included, especially after having
spent over $2,000.00 to become a NAUI instructor. He became a NAUI instructor
so he could raise the price. Ralph remembers having done that once or twice to
$24.00. He was the only instructor with more than one open water dive for the
certification. NAUI, at that time, would only hold instructor certifications courses
on the east coast, Bahamas, and the west coast. All the dive stores in the mid
west were running their own courses. Very few shops were members of SCIP
(Southwest Council of Instructor Programs.) So there was no organization to it and
this was really a haphazard way of teaching. No rime or reason to it
It was time to start a new organization. Both Ralph Erickson and John Cronin
were ready to "sink" some effort into it. Both were sick and tired of the way things
were going within NAUI. John from an equipment salesman's view and Ralph from
an educator's view point.
Establishing a name was the first order of business. Ralph wanted
Professional in the name. The word Association had to be in it. When John, as an
Irishman knowing about paddy wagons collecting the drunks off the streets,
ecstatically suggested Professional Association of Diving Instructors - PADI, Ralph
too, found himself immediately embracing the name. At the time PADI would be
the only agency with the word Professional in it.
John wanted something like the National Geographic globe in the emblem.
As for an emblem, they went out and got a book called "Hidden Persuaders" from
which they learned how to create an emblem. They felt that both the name and the
logo had a lot of sex appeal to it. The torch diver was taken from a picture on a
cover
of a 1960 U.S. Divers catalog of Cousteau Divers holding torches in the movie "The
Silent Sea." So the PADI logo became the world with longitude and latitude lines as
a background with a diver holding a torch to give light to diving education. The
whole PADI insignia has connotations to it, which in every respect, can be traced
back to the religious reef with the candle and its meanings.
The organization Started, and right from the start, they published the
Undersea Journal. Just about every instructor throughout the country bought the
Undersea Journal or signed up to be a member to get the Undersea Journal as a
membership bonus. $35.00 per year. Back then, they had more NAUI, YMCA and
NASDS instructors buying the Undersea Journal than they had instructors of their
own. PADI had a two-day thing throughout the Midwest where they certified all the
diving stores to become Certified PADI Instructors, because they were in fact
teachers. John & Ralph thought that they could change these newly indoctrinated
instructors a little bit, which they managed to do with a few, but most dropped
out. There are probably only one or two of the original 32 instructors that are still in
PADI. They may not instruct anymore themselves, but they have instructors
working for them teaching the PADI system of courses.
Right from the start, PADI had Certified Diver, Advanced Diver, Senior Diver,
Divemaster, Assistant Instructor and Instructor programs. The Divemaster rating
Started out as a Master Diver. Frank Scali a U.S. Diver sales representative for the
east coast told John Cronin that the Navy has that rating, so PADI changed it to
Divemaster.
1970 was the year PADI moved to California. John Cronin's job at U.S.
Divers had pushed him out to the West Coast the year before. Ralph Erickson
stayed with his job as a coach at Loyola, and the business side of PADI at that
point really became John Cronin's baby. This in spite of John Cronin becoming the
president of U.S. Divers. Ralph published several dive training manuals and books.
In 1972, he came out with a very well illustrated instructional book. It was
published by U.S. Divers.
About 80% of all their instructors up until 1976, were NAUI, YMCA, Los
Angeles County, NASDS or other organization instructors. In 1978 the manuals
Started to come out. The instructors had to go through an instructor course or do a
Cross-Over. The cross-over was relatively easy for those who wanted to do it.
Later on there came the more formal Instructor Examination.
Since then, there have cropped up several other diving associations. They
may not be agreeing a great deal. There is the Recreational Scuba Training Council
(RSTC). The members of RSTC are IDEA, NASDS, PADI, PPIC, SSI and YMCA.
They have set up some of the rules. RSTC submits their rules to the American
National Standards Institute, who in turn adopts the rules under the Committee for
Diving Instructional Standards and Safety. PADI for instance, has the 200 yard
swim and 10 minute survival swim/float. That was a compromise among all the diving
organizations. PADI did not have this in their requirements at one time. That was
about 8 - 10 years ago. Other organizations accepted things that PADI had. Some
things were never accepted. Like the alternate air source regulator, commonly
called the octopus, was not accepted at first, then after a few years it has become
pretty much an accepted requirement in this country. Buddy breathing was
accepted by most organizations. Some did not. PADI was the first organization to
require four dives and to have a fifth optional dive in the certification curriculum.
This made it more realistic as far as PADI was concerned.
Prior to that, a dive store could, have you in a class one day, take you out
the next day for your open water dive, certify you and ask you to come back the
following day to be the assistant instructor. Every diving instructor had a person
like that. If one was lucky, the assistant would stay with the store for 20 - 30
dives. Then you find another one who was willing to help out.
Once you made your first dive, you were no more prepared to act as an
assistant instructor than the man-in-the-moon was. But that is the way it was. So
PADI Started with Open Water Diver, Advanced Diver, Senior Diver, Divemaster,
Assistant Instructor, and the Instructor courses. The idea was to have the people
come up the chain. If you were an Open Water Diver, you could become an
instructor relatively quickly without any lengthy formalities. In a couple of years
from now, you may have to serve as an Assistant Instructor for some time before
becoming an instructor. Qualifications are becoming more rigid. At one time you
could get certified in two dives, now it is four or five. Again, the standards are
getting more involved.
SSI (Scuba Schools International) founded in 1970 is another training agency
The International Diving Educators Association (IDEA) was originally established in 1952 as part of the FSDA -
Florida Skin Divers Association (later changed to Florida Scuba Divers Association). FSDA was a large group of a
very active Florida dive clubs and has been the voice of the diver since 1952. IDEA is proud of its past affiliation with
FSDA. Instructor training and certification was handled by the FSDA Scuba Training Committee. The committee was
also in charge of Standard & Procedure and new diver certifications. As FSDA grew, so did the Scuba Training
Committee: many new instructors were from out-of-state or had moved out of the state, so the Committee was
spreading throughout the continental United States. By 1978 there were more instructors outside the state than there
were within, because FSDA had also spread to the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Aruba, Jamaica, Bermuda, Antilles and
Barbados. It was at this time the committee members decided that the FSDA Scuba Training Committee had outgrown
FSDA. A new name, a new logo and a new direction was forthcoming. A new "IDEA" was born. In February of
1978, the membership voted to expand the Scuba Training Committee to an international certification agency, based
upon the same principals of the original committee. The International Diving Educators Association (IDEA) was
officially formed. In 1979 IDEA was reorganized and incorporated. IDEA made its first international appearance as a
member of the Diving Equipment Manufacturers Association (DEMA) in Las Vegas in 1980. During the last few years
IDEA has grown tremendously and is represented in over 30 foreign countries and all the continental United States. In
1987 the majority of certification agencies agreed to form a not-for-profit agency, known as the Recreational Scuba
Training Council (RSTC). The RSTC member agencies train over 85% of the divers certified worldwide. IDEA is
RSTC charter member, with NASDS, PADI, PDIC, SSI. IDEA has worldwide recognition, availability of training
facilities and international headquarters.
NASE, the National Academy of Scuba Educators, was founded in 1982 in Lubbock, Texas.
It was the concept of a group of diving enthusiasts and business experts who identified a different approach to certification agencies and their business practices.
MDEA and other organizations have been part of RSTC and as such have helped shape the minimum standards.
The big difference between NAUI and PADI of today; NAUI is run by an
elected board of directors. PADI is run as a corporation. PADI instructors have to
follow an exact formula for instruction. A standard of procedures is laid out for
them. They have to use a book and so forth. No instructor can deviate from the
standards laid out for them. If they do not follow the procedures, they are liable for
legal action. They have to use the Audio Visual presentation and so on. In NAUI
they do not have to do that. Every instructor can make the course pretty much the
way they want to teach it. Not all NAUI instructors do that, but follow a general
outline. As long as an NAUI instructor incorporates, what NAUI says is their
standard, the instructor can make up their own lessons. PADI instructors can do
the same thing, but if they do, they may get thrown out of PADI and not have the
legal umbrella that PADI provides.
PADI has backup material for almost everything. For all students and every
classification. No other organization can say that. Approximately 70% of the divers
in the world are PADI divers. Certain countries in the world lean more toward one
organization than the other. Korea for example is a "NAUI Country"
YMCA; Started teaching scuba in 1959, In their bylaws say that they are in the business to create things for
people that nobody else is doing. So when they got into scuba instruction, it was
because nobody else was doing it. It used to be that 90% of the people were either
NAUI or YMCA and NAUI the greatest share of that.
CMAS (Confederation Mondial des Activités Subaquatiques - World
Underwater Federation) Founded in 1958; PADI was part of CMAS for about two years,
at which point CMAS decided that they would honor PADI certification. CMAS is a
French organization. All they do is issue a sort of an international scuba
certification card. At one point, you needed CMAS certification in many parts of the
world. Now it is different. CMAS is no longer important, except maybe on a little
French island in the Pacific, where you may be require to actually have CMAS
certification. The rest of the world recognizes the likes of the certification cards
from most agencies.
