DIVE HISTORIAN PRESENTATION

    INTRODUCTION

Welcome to this course. I am Bert U. Eriksson and I will be your instructor for this diving specialty course named Dive Historian. I am PADI instructor number 97792.

My inspiration to this course came from Ralph Dolk Erickson (one of the co founders of PADI, CD-0) I received my Dive Historian Instructors' certification by doing some research into the subject and submitting my course outline. Although I am a relative newcomer to this topic, I am a member of the Historical Diving Society - USA. How many of you got involved with diving within the past two years? Five years? Ten years? Twenty-five years?

We are going to talk about diving history. I will first talk a little about ancient diving, then go on to talk about the history of diving during middle ages. We will then look at some of the ideas of Leonardo da Vinci and diving through the 1800's. We are going to talk a little bit about the modern concept of Self Contained Underwater Breathing Aapparatus diving; The first SCUBA units; Emile Gagnan and Jaques-Yves Cousteau and their regulator; How the diving manufacturers came about; Their conflicts, (and they have them) conflicts between the diving stores which still exist. The equipment used in diving, (meaning Mask, Fins, Snorkels, Cylinders, Suits etc.) The rise of diving clubs as an effective thing in diving; The rise of instructional agencies and the conflict between instructional agencies which still exist.

Please bring out paper and pencil, and take notes. Please, do not hesitate to ask questions during the presentation. Remember, the one who is afraid to ask a question is ashamed of learning. I may not have the answers right off the bat, after all, I am a relative newcomer to this industry. But be assured, I will find the appropriate answer for you. If there is any thing you may have that can add to this meeting, by all means feel free to do so, and I will include it next time around.

    BEFORE HISTORY TO WWII

Modern diving, as we know it, is relatively young, only about 50 years' old. You will see where diving Started and where it is at present. From this you might infer additional changes in the future, which I hope that there will be. Some future changes will include a practical "Heads Up Display" of the instruments; smaller and lighter cylinders; and better buoyancy control devices. Safety has always been a concern, and will continue to rule the industry. It will all change and mostly for the better, we hope.

It's a safe bet that humans were first driven to dive by hunger or the need to escape some enemy or natural calamity. Yet there is evidence that throughout history people have turned to the sea not only for nourishment, but because of that most powerful of human motivations, curiosity. Peoples across the globe used sea shells for money and jewelry, sharkskin for sandpaper, and hard-won oils from whales for fuel and perfumes. To these ends, people have entered the sea and, doubtless from the very beginning, dreamed of ways to bring air down with them, to free themselves from having to return constantly to the surface.

The first diver ever recorded was Gilgamesh. The epic of Gilgamesh was one of the most important literary products in the Akkadian language. It relates the story of Gilgamesh who was a ruler of Uruk, and the best known of all Sumerian heroes, some time during the first half of the 3rd millennium B.C. None lived so long nor dared so mightily as he and his friend Enkidu. Gilgamesh, part divine and part human, was charged with knowing all things on land and sea. In order to curb Gilgamesh's oppressive rule, the god Anu caused the creation of Enkidu, a wild man who first lived among the animals but soon was initiated into city-going ways and went to Uruk. While in Uruk, Gilgamesh and Enkidu had a trial of strength, where Gilgamesh was the victor. Enkidu later helped Gilgamesh reject a marriage proposal. For that Enkidu must die, and Gilgamesh set out to find a plant to give Enkidu immortality. Gilgamesh found Utnapishtim, who described where to find the plant which renews youth. Gilgamesh dove down to the cave, deep below the surface and found the plant; Only to later, have the plant seized by a serpent. Gilgamesh returned saddened to Uruk.

The early Cretan civilization (3,000 B.C. to 1,400 B.C.) built much of its economy and art around the sea and its products; fish, sponges, and purple dye from murex shells, (gastropod, spiny shell.) During this period, references are found of divers being used for collection of sponges and mollusks, in the salvage of sunken vessels, as underwater saboteurs during wars, and in maintenance work on the hull of ships. In Homer's Iliad (about 750 B.C.) one character derides a charioteer who has fallen, telling him he looked like a diver diving for seafood.

Much of the Greek mythology is based on diving. Neptune was of course the God of the water. Then there were Atlantis and a whole family of gods. The Romans continued on with this. The Roman and the Greek had underwater diving demolition teams. Divers swam under water and drilled holes in enemy ships. These were all breath holding dives or skin dives. They did not have dive fins or masks.

By the way, the Romans called divers - urinatos. Do you know what that means? When people go in the water, especially cold water, they have to urinate quite a bit. That is the Latin name for it. And that is what they were called. It has been noted that there are only two kinds of divers; the ones that have taken a leak in their wet suits, and the divers that lie about it. Modern wet suits just don't flush right, so the practice is being discouraged.

Providing breathable air under water is not as simple as it sounds. For many centuries - indeed well into this one the most limiting factor in diving was pressure. Just 33 feet under water, pressure is twice what it is at the surface. This affects not only the ability to maneuver while submerged with a buoyant container of air, but the functions of the body itself. Air-breathing surface-dwellers simply were not designed to operate under such pressures.

Only fairly recently have scientists understood that pressure acts to compress gases as well as more tangible substances. This discovery led to two developments crucial to the history of diving: first, air was compressed to reduce its volume and increase its weight, allowing more air to be taken down with a diver more easily; and second, it was found that compression under water seriously affects the body's ability to assimilate and circulate oxygen and nitrogen in the bloodstream absolutely essential to survival in or out of water. The effects of compression below about 300 feet make venturing any deeper dangerous, even for professional divers. This natural barrier will likely never be bridged by aqualung equipped divers because oxygen in the air mixture in their cylinders becomes toxic somewhere between 132 and 297 feet, depending on the physiology of the individual diver. (Sport divers generally observe a depth limit of less than 100 feet.)

Another early story involving a diver taking part in naval warfare is the tale of Scyllias, a popular Greek diver to whom many heroic exploits were attributed. Scyllias had been captured by the Persians under Xerxes and was forced to work for them aboard a Persian ship. Learning that the Persians were planning a surprise attack on a fleet of Greek ships gathered at Artemisium, Scyllias jumped overboard during a storm and cut the cables of the Persian ships, which rendered them uncontrollable in the storm. He then swam to Artemisium, ten miles away, to warn the Greeks. Legend of the time credited him with swimming the entire distance underwater, an indication of the esteem in which he was held as a popular hero, virtually the "Superman" of his time.

It is purported that Alexander the Great in 325 B.C. sat in a submersible vessel or something and looked at the underwater world. This has never been established as a fact. Nevertheless, he is often cited as the pioneer of deep-sea diving. It is more likely that this belief is based on a legend, invented or repeated by Ethicus in the 4th century A.D. and expanded in length in the Roman d'Alexander, a French vernacular poem of the 12th century. The medieval idea of the submarine world is well reflected in one of Alexander's observations in this work. After getting into a "glass barrel" and letting himself be "swallowed" by the sea, this medieval Alexander returns to the surface, appalled, to exclaim "Sir Barons, I have just seen that this whole world is lost and the great fish mercilessly devour the lesser." This might have been a lesson in economics, but never the less it deals with the under sea world.

247 B.C. Archemedes sank, setting example for all future divers. He claimed he "did it just for the principle."

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) had a blueprint for underwater diving. His notebooks show, among designs for practically everything else, sketches of several types of diving apparatus. The designs ranged from simple tubes leading to floats at the surface, to what is almost a complete self contained diving suit, with mask covering nose and mouth and connected to an air reservoir on the diver's chest. Sandbags filled for ballast, and also an outlet for urination. He appears to have invented the breathing pipe or "chnorkel." In one of his sketches to have given it is of reasonable length (about 18 inches). In another drawing, however, he made the classic mistake of depicting the tube far too long, so that divers could not in fact have breathed through it. In one of his sketches da Vinci also showed a design for webbed swimming gloves. This was possibly an inspiration for Commandant de Corlieu between World War I and World War II who is credited for developing the first foot fins.

Then in the 1500's, they came out with the diving bell. The first occasion, where it is known to have been used, was in 1531 when Guglielmo Lorena investigated Caligula's two ceremonial galleys sunk in shallow water at the bottom of Lake Naemi.

Later two Greeks went to the bottom of the Tagus, near Toledo Spain. They used a large kettle for a diving bell, and returned to astound a waiting audience with dry clothes and a candle still burning.

How many know something about the Warship Vasa?

Some 20 - 30 years ago there were many articles in all the diving related publications about the Swedish "Warship Vasa." National Geographic had a good article in January 1962 by Anders Franzen, so did Skin Diver and many other publications.

The seventeenth century was decisive and an important period in the history of Sweden, which was becoming one of the leading great powers in Europe. The King of Sweden introduced a new system of contracting out shipbuilding to private shipbuilders in favor of the Royal Naval Shipyard. In 1625 the Crown signed a contract to build four warships, two larger and two smaller ships. The contract was signed with the Dutch shipbuilder Henrik Hybertsson and his brother who both lived in Stockholm. The two Dutchmen ran the shipbuilding operation on a contract basis at the Royal Shipyard in Stockholm. The ships were to be built within four years. Holland was the greatest shipbuilding nation of the time. The Royal Shipyard was a large industry for its time, three hundred people worked there.

The two larger ships were the Vasa and the Tre Kronor(Three Crowns). The Vasa was named after the ruling Vasa dynasty. To be precise she was named after the heraldic emblem of the Vasa dynasty. The emblem was a sheaf of corn. These two ships belonged to a category called Royal Ship (in Swedish "Regalskepp"). These were the largest warships in the navy. They were usually named after royal regalia, the Sword, the Crown etc. By 1628, the year of Vasa's completion, there were eight large warships and 21 middle-sized ships in the navy. The Vasa was built with oak from the Crown's oak forests. These trees were protected by law. Approximately one thousand oaks were felled to build the ship. The timber was floated in the summer and drawn by horses in the winter across the ice to the shipyard.

They did not have proper drawings in the early 17th century, instead they made some rough calculations of the ship's dimensions, a so called 'reckonings'. The reckonings were often kept secret.

The Vasa's hull was first built on stocks, with the prow facing towards the water. As soon as the bottom and the sides of the hull were planked and the ship was able to float, she was launched into the water and construction was thereafter completed. The reason for this was weight. It would have been very difficult to launch a heavy ship built of oak later on.

The warships in the navy returned to port around September-October and remained there until April-May. Before setting sail again in the spring the ships needed to be looked over. They were tarred, careened (keeled over), painted and rigged. Then the artillery and ammunition were taken on board. Finally provisions were loaded and the ship was ready to sail. The provisions were meant to last for two or three months.

Needless to say, life in the navy was very harsh. The crew were read the rules to be followed on board by an officer before embarkation. Failure to obey the rules often resulted in severe punishment.

The crew slept beside the cannons on the gun decks, and on the lower deck. They slept in their clothes directly on the deck planks. There were no blankets or mattresses. The hammock had not yet been developed. It entered service in 1676. The sailors sewed their own clothing. The food on board was mainly bread, grain, peas, dried meat and fish. They swallowed it down with beer. There were three different kinds of beer on board. The best kind was reserved for the high ranking officers, the second best beer was for the lesser officers while the main crew drank a simple watery kind of beer.

Because of the poor food, the cold and lack of hygiene on board, diseases frequently raged in the navy. A barber-surgeon was responsible for medical care and hair cutting.

The captain of the Vasa and its master was Söfring Hansson. To assist him there were two sub-lieutenants. Then followed a number of lesser officers, non-commissioned officers. The mates were in charge of navigation, the skipper helped steer the ship. A bombardier was responsible for the artillery. There were two mates, two skippers and one bombardier on the Vasa. There were also about 90 sailors and 20 special soldiers who fired the cannons. On board was also one cook. Three hundred soldiers were to be taken on board later on, but luckily Vasa capsized before they embarked.

In August 1628 the Vasa capsized on her maiden voyage. She had set sail from the Royal Castle at 3 pm steering eastward toward the archipelago of Stockholm. She fired a "Swedish charge", a two-gun salute. A gust of wind from the south caused her to heel somewhat, nothing alarming in that though. The Vasa soon came into more open water and the wind increased in force. Suddenly a few gusts of wind made her heel alarmingly to port and water began pouring through the lower gun ports. Efforts by the crew to right her failed and the Vasa rapidly sank to a depth of 30 meters. She sank just off the tiny island of Beckholmen, a very brief voyage indeed.

What caused this national disaster ? The Vasa was known to have been crank and she didn't carry enough ballast, there wasn't room enough. Also the lower gun ports were dangerously close to the water-line. The ship was top-heavy and had not passed lurch tests earlier. Lurch tests were carried out by letting 30 men run from side to side causing the ship to roll. Time was short though and the King, off in Poland at the time, ordered that the Vasa should set sail anyway. She was to help in a blockade operation.

The Vasa carried a crew of 200, about 50 of them drowned. Of course the disaster was considered a bad omen for the nation. People were very superstitious back then.

After the disaster an investigation was made to find out why the Vasa had capsized, why had she been so poorly constructed ? Nobody was held responsible for her sinking in the end. The king Gustav II Adolf had a part in the disaster. He had forced the shipbuilders to enlarge the Vasa so she could carry two gun decks. There had been news about a new Danish warship with two gun decks. Gustav II Adolf wanted a ship to match it. However, the king was in Poland when the Vasa set sail and it was vice-admiral Klas Fleming who allowed her to set sail. He knew about the problems with Vasa's seaworthiness. He must have felt pressured by the King who wanted the Vasa to enter service as soon as possible.

News of the disaster spread rapidly and only three days later an englishman by the name if Ian Bulmer appeared in Stockholm and made an attempt to raise her. He was not successful but he did manage to move her so that the ship lay more upright. That was no mean feat considering the Vasa's great weight. The artillery alone weighed about 80 tons. To this day nobody knows how Bulmer accomplished this. There is a possibility that the Vasa "did this herself" over the years, who knows ? When the Vasa was raised in 1961 it was pointed out that the fact that she lay upright tucked into the seabed made the work much easier.

Several more attempts to raise the ship were made but they lacked the equipment needed. Finally the diving-bell was invented and two Swedes used it to recover most of the bronze guns aboard the ship. Their names were Hans Albrecht von Treileben and Andreas Peckell. The work took place between 1663-64. Their recovery of the guns was documented by the Italian priest and explorer Francesco Negri. He was staying in Stockholm at the time and he wrote that the diving-bell used was about 1.25 meters high and that it resembled a church bell. Negri also tells how the diver worked. He stood on a lead plate inside the diving-bell. He wore warm clothes made of skin. His main tool was a long wooden pole with an iron hook on one end. The diver also brought a rope with him which he tied around the gun. The bronze guns saved from the murky depths were worth a considerable sum and were sold to Germany.

In 1664 Hans Albrekt von Treileben of Sweden and Andreas Peckell, a German salvage expert came into history. They decided, realistically that they would raise as many of the 64 cannons as they could. These cannons were made out of bronze and highly decorated. They were still very valuable, despite the fact that they had been under water for nearly 40 years. At a depth of 100 feet in bitterly cold water, made black by the mud and working with the most primitive diving bell, von Treileben and his divers brought to the surface about 50 of the cannons, each weighed between one and two tons.

It was an amazing feat that had no equal in history again until the 19th century with the advent of the modern diving suit. The "Vasa" divers were dressed in watertight flexible leather suits. The diving bell, which was made out of lead, was 4 feet high and a square piece of lead was hanging a few feet under the rim of the bell for the diver to stand on. The divers, who often complained about the diving bell leaking, had a 6-foot long boat hook and could give orders to the people on the surface by means of a rope. A diver worked there for 15 minutes at the time. The gas laws of compression were not clearly understood, and at 100 feet depth the volume of the air space would have been reduced to a quarter. No wonder the divers complained about leaks.

Later Peckell introduced a method of supplying fresh air to the bell with the help of small wooden barrels, which increased the divers' working time. In literature this invention of 1716 is attributed to the British astronomer Edmund Halley (1656-1742)

In 1667, Robert Boyle observed that a gas bubble in a viper's eye changed its volume inverse to the pressure. This is the first recorded observation of "the bends."

Obviously, we can say today, it was necessary to pump the air down to the diver under pressure, but the piston compressor was just being invented, and news traveled slowly back then. Attempts had been made to pump air using bellows, but only with limited success. The diving bell was made really practical through the work of an Englishman named John Smeaton at the end of the 18th century, particularly by fitting an air pump to the bell.

One of the great milestones was the invention by Augustus Siebe, a German working in England, of his "open dress" in 1819. Air was supplied under pressure to the helmet by means of a force pump and hose, and flowed out at the diver's waist. History now has it that Siebe in himself, made no identifiable contributions to the fundamental design of the diving dress. This is now rather attributed to Charles and John Deane, the real inventors. The "Siebe tight helmet and dress" were at least the fifth model to appear.

The first self-contained diving suit to carry a supply of compressed air was one designed by William H. James in 1825. The air (450 psi) was contained in an iron reservoir worn around the waist. The self-contained suit was not considered too important at the time, however, and in 1837 Siebe developed his closed suit which became the standard diving dress for about a century. This was an improvement over the open dress in that the diver could bend over without having water rush into the suit.

W. H. Taylor invented the first armored diving suit in 1838. Thus allowing divers to reach 150 feet without the need to decompress.

For years, it was felt that Siebe's closed suit represented the ultimate in diving gear. Two Frenchmen, Benoit Rouquayrol, a mining engineer, and Auguste Denayrouze, a naval lieutenant in 1865, added a compressed air cylinder with a diaphragm operated demand regulator, making it convertible into a self-contained apparatus. The unit was named the "Aerophore" (air bearer) and saw use by the French Navy for a period of seven years. It included some of the features that Siebe had developed. A surface compressor supplied air through a hose, but instead of leading to the diver's helmet, the hose led to a square reservoir cylinder carried on his back. Air was released from this cannister through a hose into the diver's helmet by means of an ingenious regulator that was able to automatically equalize the pressure in the diver's lungs to that of the surrounding water pressure. It was only a short step from this device to the modern regulator. Possibly due to the heavy foot weights, self contained diving did not become popular.

Jules Verne, in 1870 equipped Captain Nemo in his novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" with the Aerophore apparatus. A league, by the way, is a French distance measurement of approximately 2 nautical miles. Jules Verne added a spherical helmet of copper to protect the captain from the immense pressure of the deep. Little did he know that his innovation destroyed the system's practicability. The way it was sketched, it offered no protection to the rest of the body. The helmet was to have atmospheric pressure in it and as such, the rest of the body would have been forced up in the helmet at a very shallow depth.

Underwater photography becomes a reality in 1873, when Frenchman Louis Bouton takes the first open-ocean photos off the coast of France.

In the late 1800's there was supposedly a functional scuba unit for the first time. The way it was drawn out, and what knowledgeable investigators could figure, it would have functioned, but they never knew it was there. The inventor went into the Seine river and drowned, so he never lived to tell.

H. A. Fleuss of the British firm, Siebe, Gorman & Company, worked out an oxygen re-breathing apparatus using a solution of tow (course and broken parts of hemp) and caustic potash to absorb the exhaled carbon dioxide in 1878. In 1902, Sir Robert H. Davis, who became the head of Siebe, Gorman & Co, collaborated with Fleuss to improve the apparatus, using more effective carbon dioxide absorbents, steel cylinders for oxygen and an automatic feed valve. This equipment was used during World War I for protection against poison gas.

Sir Robert was mainly concerned with research in the rescue of crews from sunken submarines. The Davis apparatus was issued to all British naval divers during World War II. It had a great advantage in that the diver's presence was not betrayed by bubbles of air rising to the surface.

Parallel to the development of diving equipment, is the systematic studies of the problem of diving sicknesses. Two great scientists, a French physiologist named Paul Bert and a British scientist Dr. John Scott Haldane, share the credit for tackling the problem. They formulated the basic rules that today are regarded as essential knowledge for all divers. Bert, compared the effects of altitude and pressure and discovered the effects of decompression and its dangers if carried out too rapidly. He thus demonstrated the cause of gaseous embolism or decompression sickness. He also demonstrated that oxygen was effective in the treatment of decompression sickness. Paul Bert died in 1886, and his work was later continued by Haldane. Haldane came to his conclusions using goats and snakes as subjects in his tests. He thus established the speeds at which a diver can resurface without risk of "caisson's disease." These ascent rates depend on the diver's depth and time spent under water.

By 1910 Haldane had developed he idea of depth/time limits to prevent decompression sickness in underground workers. Haldane died in 1936 and his work is still considered the foundation of the dive tables and dive computers. Paul Bert's and Scott Haldane's findings lead to the development of the re-compression chamber.

A caisson is nothing more than French for the watertight box or very large diving bell, inside which men can do construction work under water. The caisson's disease was the name of that period for the bends or decompression sickness. By the way, it is not only divers that experience "the bends." It is a problem for pilots too. Primarily Air Force pilots that venture up above 25,000 feet. The cure in the Air Force is simply to let the pilot recompress by descending a few thousand feet.

In 1925, a French Naval officer Commander Yves Le Prieur and Maurice Fernez, developed a self-contained device using compressed air rather than the oxygen of the Davis unit. This was an improvement over the oxygen in that the diver could go to greater depths without the dangers of oxygen toxicity. Oxygen becomes poisonous under pressure, and cannot safely be used below about 20 feet. Also, the carbon dioxide absorbent had so far proved somewhat undependable, and several divers had accidents using it. (Later improved CO2 absorbents were devised.)

Le Prieur's apparatus carried a steel cylinder of compressed air, which was released in a continuous flow into a face mask, and the exhaled air flowed out in the water. The flow of air was regulated manually by the diver. The apparatus got adopted by the French Navy. Classes and demonstrations were conducted in swimming pools and open ocean.

George Comheines builds a scuba system. This was 1937, some 60 years after Jules Verne had predicted it. The unit had a demand valve and compressed air cylinders.

As it turned out in 1941-42, the only underwater demolition teams, were the Italians. They were called "Navy frogmen," because of their fins and their ability to stay under water for long periods of time. The Italians sided with the Germans. They went into Gibraltar and sank a bunch of British ships. The Americans overran parts of Italy and captured them. The Germans were then without frogmen, so they turned to France, which was also occupied by the Germans. They knew the French Navy was diddling around with self-contained breathing apparatuses. They called the French admiralty and demanded that they come up with an underwater breathing apparatus because they need one in short order.

The admiralty went to Air Liquid France, which was actually the original parent company of U.S. Divers. The chairman sent them a man named Emile Gagnan. Gagnan was a French-Canadian gas engineer. Gagnan was famous for developing the oxygen breathing unit for the French Air Force. He also did something else during World War II that you may not know anything about.

Gagnan had invented a demand regulator for a wood burning charcoal gas generator used in the automobile industry of Europe during the World War II. Charcoal gas became an excellent fuel for cars. In a similar fashion as the LPG fueled cars of today. The only difference was the gas cylinder. The fuel supply for Gagnan's regulator consisted of 1/4 cord of wood in the trunk.

Gagnan took the basic idea of the first regulators that were invented in the late 1800's, then added information from a butane regulating device and came up with the demand regulator for underwater breathing of compressed air.

Gagnan went to work on the regulator. Early trials in January and February of 1943 led to the final development of a two-hose concept with an inhalation hose, a mouth piece, and exhalation hose with a flapper type exhaust valve. Early patents were taken out on this hose and exhaust system. The regulator itself was not really patentable.

Jaques-Yves Cousteau, a Lieutenant in the French Navy, was an avid skin diver and an amateur underwater photographer down in Nice, near Monte Carlo where the French Navy was located. The French Navy was inactive due to the German occupation of France. Cousteau's main goal in life was photography, and it may still be, looking at much of the production that he has been part of. He volunteered to test the regulator. After some near disastrous results, they came up with a compressed air regulator. It became known as the Cousteau-Gagnan regulator. Everyone knows who Jaques-Yves Cousteau was, and "nobody" has ever heard of Gagnan. Cousteau in capital bold letters and Gagnan in small letters.

Cousteau was a very lucid individual, personable and charming and his commander in 1943 studdered. The commander needed someone who could present the scuba unit to the French admiralty. Cousteau's rise to fame came more due to his studdering commander and who felt that he could not present the project in its best interest. So Cousteau was sent up to present the regulator to the French and German admiralty in Paris. There was a big party for the occasion and Cousteau was there, met the woman of his dreams and later married her. That is how Cousteau got involved in the scuba unit.

This device also used cylinders of compressed air, but had a regulator attached to adjust the air pressure automatically to the diver's needs at depth. The diver breathed through a rubber mouthpiece clamped between the teeth, and the regulator automatically increased the air pressure to equalize pressure inside the body with increasing water pressure on the outside. This eliminated the need for a cumbersome pressurized suit.

Worn with the rubber foot flippers developed by Commander Louis DeCorlieu and a diving mask, which was a direct descendant of the goggles and masks worn by native divers in the Pacific and in the Mediterranean for centuries, this apparatus allowed mankind to dive with new freedom and safety. This was the start of the Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (SCUBA) gear as we know it today. Further trials were conducted to depths down to 130 feet by Cousteau and his diving partners, Frederic Dumas and Philippe Tailliez. Somewhat later Frederic Dumas reached 210 feet.

Another of Jaques-Yves Cousteau's contemporaries was Austrian Hans Hass, an underwater photographer of great talent. I was born and raised in Sweden and I heard of Hans Hass long before I knew of Cousteau. Hans Hass operated out of Austria-Germany, completely independent of Cousteau. At that time Cousteau was busy handling the business side of scuba diving, while Hans Hass and his wife Lotte were photographing and filming sharks in the Red Sea. His 1951 publication "Diving to Adventure" became a bestseller with a series of firsthand stories of diving with whales and sharks.

The following year, 1952 Cousteau publishes "Silent World" another best seller on the beginning of sport diving.

Dr. Eugenie Clark writes of herself in 1953 as "Lady With a Spear"; thus popularizing the idea of women as divers.

The first U.S. diving manual "Underwater Safety" was written by E. R. Cross in 1953.

Almost every industrial nation has its own brand of air pressure regulators: Cousteau-Gagnan in France, Draeger in Germany, U.S Divers in this country, AGA in Sweden, Nemrod in Spain, Davis in England and Pirelli in Italy are the more basic types.

In 1946, La Spirotechnique was formed to produce the first regulators in Europe. The "Aqua-Lung" regulator became a reality.

The First non-military scuba system arrived in the U.S. in 1949. Within months, a small group of divers emerged from among geology, oceanography and biology students at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, La Jolla, California

A few years later, there was a Frenchman, Rene Bussoz (Rene's Sporting Goods in Los Angeles,) living in the U.S. He went back to France on a visit. He was walking down the streets of Paris and saw a little store. They had an underwater breathing device in the window, which was the Cousteau-Gagnan regulator. He stepped in and inquired about it. He was told the whole story of the equipment and also that he should go to a company called La Spirotechnique and talk to the inventor himself. His name is Cousteau. So he went to the company and got permission to start a distributorship in the United States. They, (La Spirotechnique,) thought that Rene Bussoz would only sell a dozen regulators at the most. After all, the war was over, and who needed these things. He came back to the United States and Started selling them like crazy.

Both Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, had articles back in early 1950's on "How to build it yourself" two hose regulator. One of the designers, Kent Markham (phone 904-731-3218) now lives in Florida and still receives mail regarding the article. A lot of people, built the regulators. With some disastrous results, one might add. They had to get some airplane parts, some hoses and old gas masks and so forth. Technically there was nothing wrong with it at all, but some of the implementations left a lot to be desired.

The U.S. Navy, which had been dealing directly with Air Liquid France, came in with a contract for $250,000.00 worth of regulators and this newly formed company took off. Cousteau came over to this country and bought the distribution company back from Rene Bussoz for several million dollars. Bussoz took the money and moved back to France where he built a golf course and became a golf course entrepreneur. I do not know if he is still alive today, but nevertheless. That was the start of U.S. Divers.

Now how did the government get involved. When Cousteau took over, he called the company U.S. Divers. Many thought that this was a U.S. Navy company. The Navy is not in any business, but everybody thought it was. Some people today might even think that it is affiliated with the U.S. government.

We know that nitrogen in particular gets intoxicating at greater depths than approximately 100 feet. Pure or 100% oxygen gets toxic below 15 - 20 feet. This has led to the development of mixed gases, known as "breathing cocktails" in order to obviate the danger. In 1945 Arne Zetterström of Sweden reached 164 meters (535 feet) on a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen. That mixture is a lot lighter and easier to breathe than oxygen-helium mixtures that were commonly used at that time. Remember, these were the war years of WWII and helium was hard to come by. Great care must be taken to avoid the risk that the hydrogen reaches a limiting point (thundering gas). From a diving standpoint this was a great success. However, the 28 year old Zetterström lost his life owing to two military service persons misinterpreting the signals, continued to hoist the suspension cable.

1) from the surface down to 30 meter - standard air
2) from 30 meter to 40 meter 4% Oxygen and 96% Nitrogen
3) from 40 meter to 160 meter 4% Oxygen, 24% Nitrogen and 72% Hydrogen

In 1948 the English diver William Bollard reached a depth of 164 meters (535 feet) on oxygen-helium. It was not until 1956 that the English diver George Wookey reached 180 meters (580 feet). But after spending only a few moments at that depth, Wookley had to undergo nearly 12 hours of decompression.

In 1959, a 26-year-old Swiss mathematician Hannes Keller, with only two years experience in diving, decided to tackle the problem of decompression, and had the idea of combining different mixtures of gas for diving at different depths. He began diving and shattered all depth records for deep diving. Now the single hose regulators were starting to be used and Keller used a U.S. Diver "Calypso" for several of his record dives. In 1962 he reached the depth of about 300 meters (1,000 feet) off the California coast.

We have talked a little bit about regulators. In general there are two types; one hose and two hose. With a two hose regulator, you inhale through the one hose and exhaled through the other. There was no "need" for a purge button. A disadvantage was it would free flow when rolling over on your back, or really any time the mouthpiece was above the regulator in the water. This was more prevalent in the U.S., as we used larger cylinders here. This in turn forced the regulator further up toward the head. The greatest argument for the double hose regulators were "No bubbles in front of the mask." That argument kept the double hose alive for many years, beyond when it should have been retired. A major problem with the two hose regulators was, if you had to vomit underwater. One could possibly roll over on the back to make the regulator free flow, but nobody was supposed to get sick. So don't do it. To address the problem, non-return valves were added to the mouthpiece in 1954. Although this made clearing the regulator easier, it was still a problem. So under these conditions, the single hose with a purge button is far superior. Purge like crazy, let it free flow and hang onto the regulator while you do your thing.

Dacor came along in 1953 with Sam Davidson Jr. He wanted to circumvent the patent that Cousteau had. He took apart a U.S. Diver regulator and found one diaphragm separating the inlet valve from the outlet ports. He figured he could out date the whole thing by putting two diaphragms in it instead. Thus, he would not have to pay the royalty to U.S. Divers. And that was a great thing. Today there is only one manufacturer of Double Hose regulators. Nemrod of Spain. They are particularly interesting for re-breather training and for photographers.

The first "single hose" regulators date back to early 1947. These were home made contraptions built from leftover aircraft parts and such. Many of these designers and developers went on to become legends in the diving industry. E. R. Cross had an adaption of an oxygen bottle and an aircraft oxygen regulator in 1947. It took 20 years of double hose regulator designs to finally convince the diving public that single hose was here to stay.

Al O'Neil, who had held the first NAUI course in Chicago and had built the Popular Mechanics regulator, had an idea, about two hose regulators which by then were passe. He was Sportsways representative in the Midwest where he got laid off in a cost cutting move. So with some new found time on his hands, he invented a single hose regulator. He knew of the conflicts between manufacturers of single hose regulators and those making two hose regulators and the same conflicts in the diving stores. He thought, why not combine the best of both and develop a regulator by using the single hose regulator as the basis for the new regulator. Al O'Neil contacted Bob Dempster, a small manufacturing operation in Oak Lawn, Illinois. They Started a new company Demone Mfg. Co. The name came from combining their own names . They then Started to manufacture a "Double Hose-Single Hose regulator" with stage one in the back and stage two at the mouthpiece. The medium pressure hoses went to the front, one left and another on the right-hand side. The exhaust went in bellowed hoses to about 3/4 way back. Beautiful regulator. Expensive though, and was still as difficult a thing to get on and off. It lasted for a year or two, because they just could not sell enough of them to stay in business. U.S. Divers and Dacor were the two major brands and they had the market covered. It was very difficult for anyone else to break in to the market. Another reason for the demise was the rubber used was inferior and deteriorated in a few months.

Bacteria got into the rubber mouthpieces and made them taste bad. Some of the regulators had Hookah dive hose attachment points. Not too many people were Hookah hose divers; primarily stationary divers, such as gold miners in a river or seafood harvesters at sea. (The compressor is on the shore, and a hose runs out to the diver in the mining area.

Anybody who wanted to build a two-hose regulator, and was not part of U.S. Divers, had to pay a royalty to Cousteau. Right from the start there was the Voit Rubber Company. They were in the diving business. The made the first swim fins before World War II called the Owen Churchill Swimfin. They also had the first face masks in this country, so they were in the business. They were a sporting goods manufacturer. Sporting goods stores would buy one or two of these regulators all over the country. They would also buy a couple of cylinders and so forth. Cylinders were no problem for these people. Oxygen cylinders were used and they were readily available. All the component parts, the metal parts of the regulators were built in Chicago for U.S. Divers and for Voit, by a company called Demon and Bob Dempster. Other companies that got involved were Northill, they paid a royalty to Cousteau.

Healthways had been in the swimming and diving industry for some time. They made spears. The "Hawaiian Sling" was their claim to fame. It was a long pole with barbs on the one end, sliding through a handle with a surgical rubber sling around the bottom of the pole. They also made a two-hose regulator. The only bad feature about this regulator was that you never knew when you would end up with water in the mouth. 20 - 30 feet down and all of a sudden you would take a breath of water instead of air. It always did that. So you had to make what in diver training is called an "Emergency Swimming Ascent." These regulators were priced at about $59.00. A lot different from today.

U.S. Divers also came out with a single hose regulator that looked a lot like the Poseidon regulator from Sweden. The regulator became very hard to breathe from at a depth of 60 - 70 feet. It was a piston regulator and there was no push button purge valve. So if you needed air, up you went, from whatever depth you were at, in another emergency swimming ascent. Kind of interesting dives back then.

Then there was Arne Post, a multimillionaire clothing store owner in New York. He had a store in Times Square, and in the back he had a diving store. Post brought in regulators from Spain. He was sued by U.S. Divers for non payment of royalties. The upshot of it all was that it was learned that Cousteau had not taken out a patent on his regulator, and was not due any royalty from anyone.

All these manufacturers were now in competition with each other. As a matter of fact they are in competition with each other to this day. When one manufacturer comes out with a new improved product, the next year everybody else comes out with something similar. For instance Dacor, back in 1961 came out with glow top snorkel. A snorkel back then was $1.95 and the glow top was nothing more than a piece of red tape around the top of the snorkel. Industry was going apes over it. Everybody bought the snorkel.

The sales representative for the Mid West and Canada for U.S. Divers was John J. Cronin. Cronin was a very good friend of Ralph Erickson. Erickson was a swimming coach at Loyola University. They discussed this trend in scuba diving and felt that Dacor could have their $1.95 snorkel and there would be no reason for U.S. Divers to match it. John Cronin would continue to sell the $50.00 regulators and the cylinders to accompany the glow top snorkel. Next season though, almost every manufacturer came out with their version of the glow top snorkel. U.S. Divers came out with a very good snorkel, very easy breathing and good looking, but no glow top. After a few years it was discontinued as it did not go over very well with the public.

If a journalist wanted to write an article or book on the topic of diving and wanted to include pictures, that person was somewhat relegated to use manufacturers' pictures because there simply were very few private pictures available. If there were any private pictures available they were not for sale, so you had to go to the manufacturers to get the pictures, as they were the only ones that could afford to generate them. So you got some pictures from Dacor or U.S. Divers or any of the other manufacturers, and you used that one manufacturer's picture in the article. The stores carrying other brands would not want to sell the magazine or book. This showed there was a great deal of animosity between the different manufacturers and their outlets.

Manufacturers would not even talk to each other. Kind of hilarious in one way but sickening in another way. It personified itself in the diving stores. Diving stores have always been very competitive. One diving store does not like another diving store. In fact 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, you might have a dive store owner come in and try and discredit another dive store in the vicinity. Most of them have become quite sophisticated though. They don't do that kind of thing any more. But it used to be a way a way of life. When you went into one store, you just about had to listen to a tirade on how bad the other diving stores in the vicinity are.

This conflict personified itself in the two hose regulator. In about 1960, one of the manufacturers, Healthways had a president. This president knew he was about to be ousted by the board of directors. He had a very good engineer Samuel Lecocq, who came up with the first version of the single hose regulator as it is known today. It was going to be marketed by Healthways. Nobody knew anything about it except the president, the sales manager, the engineer and the guy who brought in the Cressi from Italy. The four of them left Healthways and formed their own company, Sportsways. They came out with a new single hose regulator the "Waterlung". A beautiful regulator, which breathed just perfectly.

When the single hose regulator came out, U.S. Divers and Dacor pretty well controlled the two hose market. They had the biggest diving stores in their chain of distributors and dealers. Sportsways went to all the other non-distributor dealers and gave them distributor pricing on the single hose regulators. If you were a dive store owner who sold single hose regulators and somebody came in to buy a two-hose regulator, you gave them a very good sales pitch on why to buy a single hose regulator. Well the customer who was trained on a double hose regulator did not want a single hose regulator. So they would leave the store and go back to buy a double hose regulator. A "single hose regulator person" who was trained on a single hose regulator scuba unit, who would venture over to a double hose regulator store, would virtually take his life in his own hands if he asked for a single hose regulator. It was almost a hilarious situation.

A year later Healthways came out with a single hose regulator. Then came Scubapro's version, and Sportsways' version. Sportsway's regulator was beautiful. Healthways introduced a less expensive version about $10.00 - $12.00 less than the others. Now, a Sportsways' regulator had a purge button that stuck out, while the Healthways purge button was indented. Certain stores sold Healthways while other stores carried Sportsways, yet other stores still handled double hose regulators.

If you went into a Sportsways store and wanted a Healthways regulator, you just had to listen to this tirade about why you just do not want to buy what you came in to get (Because you may be swimming in a tunnel with your arms at the side and you got into a situation where you needed to push the purge button for more air and had no way of getting your fingers to it, with the Sportsways protruding button you could use your body to push the button.) Anyway there were a lot of ridiculous arguments between the various makes. Most of it did not make any sense at all.

As a matter of fact, there was one store on the east coast, who worked totally differently with one of the newer manufacturers. The owner wanted to sell only those regulators from that newer manufacturer. But everybody was buying U.S. Divers regulators. U.S. Divers was really in a monopoly situation in the marketplace. He got a dozen U.S. Diver regulators, took them into the back room and changed a few adjustments in the regulators. After these adjustments, some of the regulators would make horrendous noises, others would kind of studder and so on. Here you came in and wanted to buy a "Calypso" regulator. The shop owner would say: "Take your pick and breathe off it. The regulator did not sound like what you were used to, so the store owner would offer you to try another one. Well, after a few tries, he would give a sales pitch about the quality control of the competitive regulator, and you were sold on the competition. U.S. Divers caught wind of this, and threatened to sue the guy if he didn't stop it. Kind of interesting, but that's the way the diving industry was.

The diving industry consisted among others, of a lot of "Harley Davidson riders." These early customers all came in to the dive stores with their leather boots and the full regalia. Nevertheless, they were the ones who bought the regulators. There was not a large market back then. In the 1940's and '50's even into the '60's, female divers were the exception. Women sat on the beach looking decorative, but rarely if ever got wet. As the sport progressed, more and more women became interested in the sport.

Hollywood got into diving! One of the greatest boosts the scuba industry got from Hollywood was from Mike Nelson (portrayed by Lloyd Bridges) and the television series Sea Hunt in 1958. The show aired through 1961 with weekly installments.

By 1963 the TV audience was ready for "Flipper", or "Lassie in a wetsuit" as some preferred to call the show.

Earlier days, friends would get together and buy from a manufacturer direct, maybe six or 10 regulators at distributor cost and only pay additional freight. This setup the common practices of discounts in the professional business.

Today we have beautiful stores, most with their own compressors, and many with a swimming pool with 90 degree water behind the lobby area. Diving stores have to have dealer pricing and a markup to survive. Some stores were distributors and dealers at the same time. There was a problem competing within an environment like that, at least for the stores that were simple dealers. The distributing dealer could cut his "Over the counter price" and thus somewhat unfairly compete with his own chain of dealers, who got 20% less profit to start with.

At that time too, the clubs Started. There are still clubs around and there is nothing wrong with clubs. But at that time, there were some 500 to 1,500 diving clubs throughout the states. Think about it, 1,000 clubs in 1962. The clubs became highly organized. One had to belong to a club to be part of a spear fishing competition and so on. A few clubs turned to the serious business of search and recovery for police, sheriff's, and fire departments. Civil Defense Diver Units were organized throughout the country.

After a while, people in clubs quit diving. All they did was have big social events, but politically they were very involved in diving. Probably the single most important function was to work for legislation favorable to divers and combine to prevent the passage of unfavorable legislation. As part of their effort in this direction, clubs have helped to bring, what we now know as, the true situation to the attention of the public. They got together and formed the Underwater Society of America, which is still in existence in a very small part today. They had big meetings and every state had their own "Council of skin and scuba-diving clubs." They sent representatives to the national convention once a year, wherever it was going to be.

These conventions would normally be in association with the National Sporting Goods Association Show where the diving manufacturers would show their wares. Today they do not do that. The manufacturers show their wares at the Diving Equipment Manufacturers Association, (DEMA) shows. DEMA, founded in 1976, consists of nothing but people who are involved in diving.

The clubs had quite a bit to say about what was going on in diving. Some clubs worked hard on exposing false advertising and thus protecting members from purchasing inferior equipment, as the Sons of the Beaches Club in Long Beach, California. Other clubs organize courses of instruction in other aspects of diving.

Due to the work requirement, or possibly other media like the Discovery Channel on TV and the availability of professional class video information through these media, the club idea gradually slackened off and the individual councils in each state disappeared. The diving clubs kind of ceased to exist, as a result of that, or at least ceased to have a very influential part of diving.

There was one magazine in particular, Skin Diver, owned and operated by Jim Auxire and his partner Chuck Blakeslee since 1951. They regularly published a list of diving clubs. It was quite influential and strictly for scuba diving. It became the bible for scuba. Skin Diver Magazine still enjoys the greatest circulation of any dive magazine, although it is now written more for dive travel. During the early years, the articles would hit on every facet of diving.

Some diving stores still have "their own" diving clubs, which can be financially dangerous for the store. Those stores that have them, may just not realize how dangerous these clubs can be for the dive store. From a liability standpoint that is. But it really is. The legal society of today will find a way. The attitude is called "Find the deepest pocket."

Case in point. There was a diving store in Wisconsin where a situation occurred. The only thing the store owner did was to handle the club money and kept account of it. When the club needed money the store gave it to them. If the club was out of money, the store owner would find some. In this case, the president of the club, who was an Open Water Diver and another member of the club and a third member who also was an experienced diver. These three went diving in a lake in Wisconsin. The three got separated in the murky water of the lake. Probably as murky as lakes come. One diver came up to the surface and was about 50 feet away from the dive flag, which the other guys had on a line and were pulling around with them. They had agreed to meet at the shore if they became separated. Nobody had a compass. This was in early April. Not much boat traffic on lakes at that time, if any, especially in Wisconsin. A power boat came along and this guy dove down. The diver's foot got cut off by the boat propeller. The boats man pulled the diver on board with his foot, got him across the lake to shore and to a hospital. Soon thereafter the diver Started legal proceedings. The boats man did not have any money, so the diver sued the president of the club, the "Divemaster" and the dive store. The two divers settled out of court with the injured person, but the dive store refused to settle. The case went to court, where the dive store spent about $10,000.00 to get the claim dishonored. It ended up that the diver was within 100 feet distance (the legal distance where boats are not allowed in Wisconsin) of the dive flag. Therefore, it became a wrongful claim. Rightfully so, but $10,000.00 back then was a whole lot of money. So, again from a liability standpoint, it may not be a dive store's best interest to be directly involved with a club.

Flag	Name	Phonetic Pronunciation	Meaning
	Diver Down		I have a diver down; keep well clear at slow speed.
	Alpha	AL-fah	I have a diver down; keep well clear at slow speed.
	Papa	pah-PAH	All personnel return to ship; proceeding to sea (In port).
	Seven	SEV-en	Numeral seven.

The "Diver Down" Flag came along around 1958. The flag had Started out as a Navy number 7 flag which was red with a white vertical stripe. The Navy had specific rules about size and so forth and the divers' flag emerged. It was promptly used as a target by early personal water-craft. Clubs and councils Started to promote better diver-boatman relations. These efforts did much to spread the good word about the divers' flag. Michigan was the first state to officially recognize the flag. Many boats flew the flag simply in support of diving. It took quite some time to teach the boatmen only to fly the flag when a diver was down.

On the international scene, the "Alpha" flag is the norm. This is a white and blue flag. The white area near the staff and a triangular notch cut out of the blue area.

Another flag to know is the "Diver Recall" flag. This is the International Flag Code "P", a blue rectangular flag with a white smaller rectangle in the middle. The more common diver recall signal is to bang on the under water ladder, or play the very powerful theme music from "Jaws" over the underwater loudspeakers.

Even today, boatmen don't seem to know what these flags means. If they do know that it is a diver down below flag, they don't know enough to stay away from it. It seems like the modern water scooter riders use the flags as slalom markers. The dive flag is not as effective as we would like it to be. NM State Park regulations, for instance, require one competent diver-tender must remain above water at all times. The same regulations also cover the diver's flag and the 150' distance that boats shall respect.

Throughout the 1950's and early 1960's several steel cylinder sizes were marketed having pressures ranging from 2,150 to 3,000 psig. Between 1958 and 1960, valves changed from mostly 1/2" tapered thread to 3/4", 14 turns to the inch straight thread with an o-ring. However, there were some 1/2" straight threaded cylinders as well. Only steel cylinders were authorized for commercial service until late 1971.

Most early commercial steel scuba cylinders ranged in volume from about 65 cu ft to 95 cu ft. However, many surplus World War II era 38 cu ft cylinders with a service pressure of 1,800 psig were used, commonly as doubles. Some "38's" still pass their quality assurance tests and remain in service today.

The U.S. manufacturers of steel scuba cylinders included Pressed Steel Tank Co. (PST), Norris Industries, and Walter Kidde Co. The Italian firm, Faber, makes DOT approved cylinders sold by the brand names Scuba Pro and OMS.

By the mid 1950's, the PST Co. and perhaps one other company began making aluminum cylinders from 6061 alloy for the U.S. Navy. The fabrication process was very different from the way aluminum cylinders are made today. Although many of those round bottom cylinders found their way into civilian service, they are illegal, may not be hydrostatic retested and may not be filled at commercial air stations.

Warning: There are NO legal round bottom aluminum scuba cylinders even though many of the old navy cylinders are used today, are illegally re-tested by careless re-testers and filled by thoughtless fill station operators.

Newly formed Luxfer USA, Ltd., with DOT special permit SP6498, began producing aluminum cylinders in late 1971. Using 6351 alloy in a cold extrusion process, the cylinder did not require a bottom plug like the former military type and the approved cylinder had a FLAT bottom. In order to be equivalent to the then popular steel cylinder, Luxfer made its cylinder 6.8" in diameter to fit existing non-adjustable back packs and with a similar 2,475 psig service pressure. To achieve the 72 cu ft capacity, the cylinder was longer but, as a consequence, it was about 11 pounds buoyant when near empty. Divers quickly named it the "floater."

Both Walter Kidde (with special permit SP7042) and Norris Industries(SP6688), using the 6351 alloy, followed Luxfer into the aluminum cylinder business during the early 1970's. Kaiser Aluminum (SP6576) joined in but chose 7039 alloy which proved to be unsuitable for high pressure cylinders. That cylinder (brand name AMF) has a 2700 psig service pressure and a somewhat rounded (beveled) bottom.

Luxfer and Walter Kidde continued production under their DOT SP6498, E6498 or SP7042, E7042 until the DOT formalized the aluminum cylinder category 3AL in July of 1982. Unfortunately for owners of Norris Industries SP6688 and Kaiser SP6576, both cylinders became illegal when their permits expired by 1979. Like the illegal navy surplus aluminum cylinder, many SP6688 and SP6576 cylinders are used today because hydro re-testers fill station operators and owners ignore or are ignorant of their illegal status.

The Catalina Tank Co. (now called Catalina Cylinders) began manufacturing 3AL cylinders in 1986 using the 6061 navy type alloy. Luxfer switched to the 6061 alloy in late 1987 while Walter Kidde continued using alloy 6351 until production ceased in July, 1989. Today, only Luxfer Gas Cylinders and Catalina Cylinders produce 3AL scuba cylinders for sale in the U.S. and much of the world.

PST created renewed interest in steel cylinders by introducing high density 3,500 psig steel E9791 cylinders in 1987. Coyne joined the steel scuba cylinder business in 1993 producing 2,400 psig cylinders in several sizes.

Readers interested in more scuba cylinder history should read INSPECTING CYLINDERS- 3RD EDITION available from PSI, Inc. 6531 NE 198th St., Seattle, WA 98155-2031 $18.50 including U.S. shipping.

Walter Kidde Co. was located in California. Their cylinders were very popular in the scuba diving community. That is where the name "K"-valves came into the picture. This may not be the story that you have heard, but truly that is how it came about. The first cylinders were really oxygen bottles. The oxygen bottles had rounded bottoms, so the first scuba cylinders were also manufactured with rounded bottoms. They needed bottom boots to stand up. Now you don't need the boots, but we still have them. Mostly for protection of the cylinders, but really not. Scubapro came up with the idea of galvanized steel cylinders with an epoxy coating. U.S. Divers was the last to pick up the flat bottom. It seems that U.S. Divers always waited 5-6 years before coming up with the same thing as everybody else. The cylinders have been a good extra piece of business for the diving stores.

There have been several different configurations of valves. The "J" valve, the "K" valve and the "R" valve are the more common. Although the name "K"-valve comes from Walter Kidde Co., the manufacturer, the designations "J", "K" and "R" were the item numbers in one of the early U.S. Divers catalogs. They all sit on straight regulator attachment risers, except for a Demone Manufacturing Company valve. (Introduced in 1961.) Their valve had a 30 degrees angled stem. This puts the regulator further away from the head and slanted. Quite comfortable. I can only imagine that it was cost that made them discontinue it. Demone Mfg. Co. closed its operation shortly thereafter. Lately the valve has made a comeback, particularly in Europe with their DIN valves.

"J" valves; That is a constant reserve valve that has a lever activated by a pull rod that you set in the up position. That will give the diver a 300 - 500 psi reserve where he can pull down the lever on your left side and get the last few psi of air out of the cylinder. However remember that you have only 300 psi left when it operates, no matter if you are at 30 or 300 feet. You pull the rod on the cylinder and come up. It had its problems though. Suppose you brushed against something, or inadvertently pulled down the lever, then when you ran out of air, you were really out of air. With no reserve as expected. Now you had to buddy breathe with somebody, or do an emergency swimming ascent exhaling all the way.

"K" valves; This was the Walter Kidde Co. standard On-Off valve no frills, and the only one that has survived the passing of time.

"R" valves; The positive or automatic reserve valve differs from the constant "J" reserve in that when the reserve is in effect, the diver must rise in the water to get sufficient air to be comfortable. That is unless he reaches over his shoulder and completely opens the valve to "fill position." This was a difficult maneuver, and the valve did not survive

Around 1962-63 came the Submersible Pressure Gauge into the mainstream dive stores, but it was not until -68 or -69 that it became popular. Amazing, who would want to drive a car without a fuel gauge. The "J" valve was no longer of interest to the recreational diver. You can't have a "J" valve in the up position and use a pressure gauge at the same time. You will not get an accurate reading. Every time you would take a breath, the pressure would drop. So the only places you will still see a "J" valve is probably on some far out island in the Caribbean, or possibly on a professional Search & Recovery team member's cylinder. The reason for this, is the water they dive in may be so murky, one cannot read a pressure gauge.

To alleviate the problem of the fluctuating pressure reading when breathing, one manufacturer came out with a cylinder valve with a pressure port below the "J" valve. Now every cylinder had to have a small pressure gauge mounted on the valve, or a pressure gauge on a hose, which made the cylinders difficult to handle.

There were also some regulators with built in "J" valves downstream of the submersible pressure gauge port. These did not prove popular. The idea was that you could use lower cost "K" valves on your cylinders and still have the "J" valve wherever the regulator went.

Things have changed a lot from the 17th century wet suits made from leather that were used when raising the cannons from the warship Vasa.
Early Dry Suits;

Wet Suits; Invented in 1956 1/8", 1/4", 3/8" thick neoprene. No nylon "sharkskin" that we had a few years back, and certainly no fleece as today. You just about had to use baby powder, corn starch or soap to get them on. Pantihose helped then, just as it helps today. Specially if the suit is wet. After about the third dive, they ripped in the wrong place. Then came the nylon layer "sharkskin" that made it easy to put on when dry. Colors were black, blue or red. It was really a question of what colors one could dye the material in. Then came the striping that one glued on, specially around the glued seams. But they peeled off. Some people felt that the only way to get more people into diving is to make the suits more colorful.

The wet suits of that day were just glued together, and readily came apart in the seams. That made cold water rush in and at that time one aborted the dive. The neoprene material was not as flexible as today. When you bought a wet suit, you had all your measurements taken, and the "wet suit guy" would get a pattern together and glue it together for you. Some people preferred to put a "seam-tape" over each seam to stop the rip. It was only later that the seams were stitched and glued, which helped a lot. It took several years of development to get the bad smell of the neoprene wet suits under control.

Booties; or flipper slippers as they were called

Today's Dry Suits; There is a dry suit manufacturer. MOBBY'S out of Japan, I believe. Really flashy suits, looks like they would fit on stage in the best of night clubs in Las Vegas, Nevada. Henderson represented them in this country. After a few short years they only imported the basic black dry suits. A sad story, but that is the economics of the industry. They are now back in spectacular colors, but I imagine, basic black will again become the norm.

From the early "Mae West" horse collar flotation vests to the "Nautilus" by DACOR, a constant volume contraption and the modern Buoyancy Compensator Device (BCD) the industry has come a long way. Although William F. Hogan is credited with inventing the BCD, the first successful buoyancy compensator was patented in 1961 by Maurice Fenzy

The earliest types were merely goggles. But it was soon learned that one cannot clear internal sinus pressures with goggles. The goggle ended up putting a squeeze on the tissues around the eye, and the diver ended up with a raccoon looking black eyes imprint. The first the masks were round. It was hard to equalize using these masks. (No way to pinch the nose shut.) You just had to stay at a given depth and wiggle and play around and try your best. Or you lifted the mask up, and grabbed the nose and blew. Then you cleared the water out of the mask. It was a great improvement when AMF had a piece of neoprene rubber glued to the inside, that one could press the nose up against. Now, most masks have pinch-pockets, or something similar, to make it easy to clear the sinuses. Voit was the big manufacturer of masks. Some masks came with built in snorkels with ping-pong balls to keep the water out. These didn't work very well. Plastic face-plates became popular for a while, but we are now back to safety glass, which will not shatter into needle-sharp fragments, if it receives a sharp blow. Some masks have purge valves to purge out the water. Not really any advantage, but in the development of the "perfect mask" it had its place. Black rubber was for the longest the only material in masks.

That is until Hollywood came along. For the filming of "The Deep," Hollywood needed more light on the face of the leading lady, Jacqueline Bissett. They helped develop the clear silicon mask for her. The idea caught on quickly, and today most all masks are made out of silicon.

The movie or was it the wet T-shirt look, also helped the dive industry to a resurgence in diving among male teenagers.

The side window was an early development of a mask to reduce the tunnel vision. One later feature in some masks is a prism lens at the bottom of the face plate. This gives a much greater viewing angle downward.

At one time, two California optometrists came up with a set of contact lenses for underwater wear. The front of the lens was optically flat, eliminating the need for a mask. The wearer looked awful strange out of the water, but they worked under water. The only problem was that they slipped out under the eyelid, or the diver lost them.

Today we are looking forward to the "Heads Up Instrumentation Displays" integrated in the masks.

In February of 1868, a San Francisco photographer, Halvor Olsen was granted the first U.S. patent for fins, which were identified as "Fin Sandals for the feet." There is little record of the diving activities of this man or if anyone else had seriously used his fins. The standard of the day was to use tape to tape the toes together for added propulsion.

A French Naval Officer, Commander Louis DeCorlieu began research on the Law of Cubes which states "The discontinuity of impulsion destroys the yielding power of a propulsion device." After continuing experiments that Started in 1928, he finally, in 1932 obtained the desired results with an elastic rubber fin. The elasticity of the fin reduced the discontinuity of propulsion as much as practically possible. In 1933, DeCorlieu was granted his first European patent for fins calling them, "Swimming Propellers." In November 1937 he was granted a U.S. patent.

The first swim fin that came out in the U.S. marketplace was the Owen Churchill fin just before WWII. Owen Churchill was a yachtsman from California. He found the natives in Tahiti swimming with crude fins made out of leaves. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1939 Owen Churchill found the DeCorlieu's patent and made an agreement with DeCorlieu to exclusively manufacture fins in the U.S. 1940 was really the first production year with 946 pairs sold. Three years later, the orders for the fins were 50,000 pair of fins per order. He must have sold millions of them. They were used all over the place. Concurrently Owen Churchill received design patents and improvement patents on his own designs.

1955 came the "Duck Feet" fins. Arthur H. Brown had a mask with a purge button, a snorkel and the "Duck Feet" fin. That's all his company sold. Two ridges in the fin. It was manufactured from pure gum rubber. It was a good fin. Many compounds were tried but the original gum rubber fins had to be reintroduced.

Scubapro came out with a fin that they imported from George Beuchat of France, with Jet-Stream holes in them. From the Jet-Fins came the evolution of modern diving fins. Next year Dacor and U.S. Divers came out with similar fins. One of them claimed it had venturi slots in them. Well there is no venturi effect, but they sold a great many of them. All were good fins but really no appreciable speed difference generated by these fins. Some people may have the right idea when they say that if the fin is light and easy to carry in the dive bag, it is a good fin.

U.S. Divers introduced the Caravelle Fin. The most monumental failure in the history of fins. They were the Edsel of the diving world. Caravelle Fins were years ahead of the norm in materials and design, and definitely ahead of technology, but was a huge commercial failure. The Caravelles had rubber foot pockets with plastic blades.

Another monumental failure was in 1977, when Ralph Shamlian combined a diving fin with a ski boot. The intent was to prevent the diver from involving his ankle. Instead all trust would be exerted from and controlled by the larger thigh muscle. Although well advertised, these fins were met with limited success and were soon retired, undoubtedly because of their radical departure from the norm and exorbitant retail price.

Hand fins were tried at one time as an aid to swimming and are still being used by disabled persons. Commander Louis DeCorlieu developed these to be used with his foot fins. Generally the hands add less to the propulsion. So just like you all have learned, keep the hands close to the body. They produce more drag otherwise.

There have been many kinds. As I mentioned before, Leonardo da Vinci had several concepts of how snorkels and other diving appliances should work. Humans do not have the lung power to breathe from a depth of more than 18 - 20 inches. At 36" it becomes practically impossible to overcome the external pressure and inhale. Various inventions to keep the water out have been tried. Ping-pong balls, which crumbled under pressure. From there they would not work. Today a good snorkel has a bottom well with a purge valve for easy clearing. A mouth piece that fits your mouth is also very important.

Hose Protectors; In 1973 Ralph Erickson accidentally "invented" the hose protector. He figured that if he took white tape and wrapped it around the hoses, he would be able to see anyone walking out of the pool area with his regulators. A guy from a diving club asked him one day what that was for. Ralph, who didn't think the fellow would take him seriously said, for safety, so that no holes would appear in the hoses. Excellent idea, said the guy, who owned a plastic manufacturing plant. Six months later, the Trident hose protectors as we know them today were in the marketplace.

Weight Belts; The need for better weight belts becama apparent as the cylinder volume and its buoyancy increased. Some divers filled bicycle tires with lead shot. It made a great weight belt. Then came the lead pucks. The size of a hockey puck with a bolt hole in the middle. The belt itself had bolts. and you olted the wights to the belt. The weights that we thread the webbing through has been with us for quite some time. Somewhere in the middle -70's Dacor came out with the Nautilus BCD with its integrated weight system, but more about that contraption in the BCD section.

With the advent of the wet suits, the weight belts became important. Before then, there was very little need for additional weights for a diver to stay neutrally buoyant. The few pounds a diver may need, he bolted to the rig. The belt itself was needed to serve as a hold down for the tee-shirt to carrying a knife. At the same time it became obvious that some sort of a quick release mechanism would be important. Some divers merely took a bicycle inner tube and filled it with lead shot, and the soft weight belts that we know today were born.

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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.

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.

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LOCAL NEW MEXICO DIVING HISTORY

If you are at all interested in the history of diving, I would strongly suggest that you join the:

The Historical Diving Society, USA

2202 Cliff Drive #119

Santa Barbara, CA 93109

Phone 805-963-6610

Memberships range from $1,000.00 down to $30.00 per year. You can find them on the Internet as HDSUSA@AOL.COM

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