The Famous Cousteau Aqualung

In 1942 Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emile Gagnan redesigned a care regulator to provide air on demand and four years later The Aqualung was launched onto the market in France having been kept secret until the South of France was liberated. That same year their diving companion Frederic Dumas hit 62 meters with the aqualung. There were only three aqualungs of which one was destroyed in a freak accident by an artillery shell on the French Riviera that was void off course.

In 1950 they went on sale in Britain, a year later in Canada and 1952 saw the Aqualung reach the American market. Three years later an article published in the National Geographic on Cousteau's archaeological expedition at Grand Congloue Island in conjunction with a French movie called Shipwrecks (Epaves) tipped a demand for the new addition to diving gear and neither French nor American manufacturers could keep up with the demand.

By end of the 1800’s Louis Boutan's underwater camera inspired the first ever diving magazine with W.H Longley providing the first colour photos in the US around 1923.

The Submersible bathyspcape and bathshpere (evolved diving bells) Diving bells came a long way since Alexander’s early glass version. Their improvements were inspired mainly for marine scientific purposes. The inventors of the bathysphere, Zoologist William Beebe and engineer Otis Barton teamed up in 1930, their courageous and pioneering exploits from then on would make an unforgettable Hollywood movie script. These adrenalin junkies designed a perfectly round 1 inch-thick cast steel with which they managed to reach 3000ft in dives off the coast of Bermuda. The project was temporarily abandoned four years later due to the danger of its heavy 5,400 pounds. Around 1950 they managed to break their own 3028ft record in the fifties by clocking 4500 feet.

In 1940 Swiss Jacques Piccard, his son Auguste invented what they called a bathyscaphe. After a few teething problems their improved 1953 invention named Trieste was taken to 10900m / 35802 feet by Lieutenant Don Walsh in 1960 after its acquisition by the Navy. Certification specialists NAUI (National Association of Underwater Instructors) was formed in 1959 by Albert Tillman and Neal Hess and PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) by Ralph Erickson and John Cronin in1966.

Diving and Hollywood

1951 saw the WWII movie, The Frogmen set in the Pacific Ocean showing the evolution of the equipment at the time, particularly aqualungs. Scuba diving first became officially popular to the masses in 1957 with the TV series Sea Hunt.

It was just a matter of time before James Bond would snap up this 'advanced technology' and Thunderball made scuba diving hot around 1965. In 1989 the movie The Abyss took its popularity to the next level.

The RMS Titanic wreck (Top Left) was discovered in 1985 and much ado was made of this in Hollywood toward the end of the 19th century including popularizing MIR submersible trips.