In what year was the first scuba invented. Who first invented scuba gear

Who invented scuba gear? A strange question, you say, of course the French, Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emile Gagnan, and they did it in 1943. This was considered until an article by the famous English submariner, Captain W. Shelford, appeared in the English magazine "Triton". He argued that the main part of the scuba gear, the reducer invented by Cousteau and Gagnan, was just a modification of the device created in the thirties by their compatriot I. le Prier.

Further more. Continuing his research, Shelford came across information about the Japanese Ogushi, whose autonomous apparatus was patented in 1918 and was produced for a long time for the Imperial Navy. The Ogushi device had the same parts as the current scuba gear: a mask, a compressed air cylinder, a valve reducer, a flexible reservoir attached to the swimmer's belt. However, the Japanese was not the first!

One of the most remarkable historical records of scuba diving has come down to us thanks to the historian Herodotus. According to his testimony, during the first sea war in the history of 481-480. BC. Greek divers Skillias and his daughter Gidna from the city of Skiona cut the anchor ropes of the ships of the Persian king Xerxes, after which the ships were thrown ashore by a storm.

To speed up the dive, divers began to take a load with them under the water, and to increase the duration of their stay under water - an inflated bubble, from which a tube went to the mouth. An Assyrian bas-relief, carved in 885 BC\u003e E, depicts warriors floating on air-inflated waterskins. A description of a leather wineskin with a breathing tube is given in 77 BC. e. Roman writer and scientist Pliny the Elder. In 1191, divers performed the duties of postmen, providing communication with the outside world of the fortress of Acre, besieged by Richard the Lionheart. During the Battle of Les Andelys in 1203, divers descended under water with vessels filled with flammable or explosive mixtures. During the siege of the island of Malta by the Turks in 1565, bloody battles arose under water between the divers of the warring parties. In 1405, the German writer Kieser described a diver's suit consisting of a leather jacket, a metal helmet with two glass windows and a leather tube connected to an air bag. However, this method could not increase the time spent under water for a long time, since the volume of air in the bubble was small and during breathing, the content of carbon dioxide rapidly increased in it and the content of oxygen decreased.

In 1535, Guglielmo de Lorena created a cylindrical chamber about 1 m high and 60 cm in diameter with glass windows. The camera was suspended on ropes and placed on the diver's shoulders, covering only his head and chest. In 1551, Nicolo Fontana invented a diving suit in which the diver had to stand with his head in a large glass ball. Another method of immersion under water known from ancient times, in principle but different from others is the use of tubes. Pliny the Elder in 77 BC e. reported combat in the climbers who breathed through a tube clamped in their teeth, the other end of which was brought to the surface.

The diving suit, proposed by Leonardo da Vinci, is a one-piece garment of fur or leather with air inside, boots with heels or iron hooks, sandbags for gravity, urinal and a copper armor jacket. Vallot's 1524 treatise on fortification contains a depiction of a diver in a leather helmet with a leather tube fastened with strong rings and ending with a disk float, reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings.

In 1613, engineer Diego Ufano described a helmet that was supposed to help the diver "feel better underwater and therefore work better." In the XVI-XVII centuries in various countries, the designs of diving bells were developed and improved. The first report on the use of a diving bell refers to 1538 on the Tagus River (Toledo, Spain). Two Greek acrobats performed in front of Charles V, entering inside a bell of their own design, made in the form of a pot. In 1595 Veranzio published information about a diving bell and gave its image. The English statesman and philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) proposed this method: when the diver can no longer hold his breath, he sticks his head into a vessel with air that was previously lowered into the water to fill his lungs, after which he leaves the bell and continues to work. In 1597, the Bonayuto Lorini bell appeared, similar in design to Lorena's chamber, but equipped with a platform for a diver and intended for fortification work.

In 1783, the French engineer Forfe designed a device that consisted of bellows worn on the chest and back of a diver, and plate-shaped springs held both halves of the bellows in an open position. In 1797, the German A. Klingert proposed "clothing for divers" made of waterproof fabric attached to the edge of a metal cap, ending in short sleeves and knee-length pantaloons.

But the main problem - to give the diver freedom and make his work autonomous, has not yet been solved.

On September 29, 1863, American officials granted a patent to a certain K. McKean. He guaranteed that in the suit he invented, a diver is able to "sink to the bottom, move along it and independently float to the surface." McKean's apparatus was completely like scuba diving: when you look at it, a sealed rubber suit, a back tank with compressed air, a regulator for its supply to the diver and, of course, a mask are striking. McKean also invented inflatable buoyancy compensators, a kind of life buoys that have only recently become widespread. However, this talented self-taught person was not lucky - he created his own prototype of scuba gear at the height of the civil war in the United States, when even those interested were not up to innovations.

Therefore, the French engineers Rouqueirol and Deneiruz had to "rediscover America" \u200b\u200bthree years later, once again inventing a regulator for an open circulation underwater breathing device. This part was a membrane, on which water was pressed on one side, and on the other - the air inhaled by the diver. When the pressure increased during immersion, a valve in the membrane automatically opened and an additional portion of air entered the mask, and upon ascent, its dose naturally decreased.

But the enterprising French, the famed Jules Verne, were again not the first, for in 1831 the Brooklyn driver C. Condert equipped his underwater suit with a completely original system of constant air supply.

The first surface air regulator was patented in 1866 by Benoit Rouqueirole, a French mining engineer who in 1860 invented a compressed air regulator for use in polluted mines. This device consisted of a container with compressed air and a hose. Later, Auguste Deneiruz adapted it for automatic air supply under water. The regulator worked on the principle of dry and wet chambers, diaphragm and valve. The system was driven by inhalation (low pressure) and exhalation (high pressure). The regulator was capable of making the pressure in the breathing apparatus equal to the ambient pressure. The inventors were granted patent N 63606 for the device. It was this apparatus that Jules Verne described in his novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

However, some researchers dispute the priority of Kondert, recalling W. James, who made drawings of such a device even earlier, in 1825. Only he did not manage to test his device in practice, in contrast to the Frenchman L. d "Aujerville. However, he deserves a special story.

At night, in a strong snowstorm, the English ship Bellona crashed on the rocks. In August 1832, the director of the rescue company L. d "Ogerville arrived at the scene of the disaster with a group of divers equipped with self-contained breathing apparatus, created by their chief. In a relatively short time, the submariners brought to the surface not only valuables, but all the guns, gun carriages, cannonballs, even ballast - 150-kilogram iron ingots “Bellona.” The operation was so successful that the Minister of the Navy ordered the organization of several diving schools and the creation of special groups of underwater rescuers, that is, something that was implemented only in the XX century.

The design of the apparatus L. d "Ogerville was like two drops of water resembled modern scuba gear. All that was missing was fins, and the dorsal air cylinder was riveted from red copper. A breathing bag with two copper tubes in the form of a" copper spiral covered with waterproof oilcloth ", which were connected to the mask, which had" a nose of copper, covered inside with mastic, which allowed it to adapt to any nose. "Lead weights were suspended at the level of the diver's chest, in front and behind.

According to experts who watched the experiments with the water-breathing system of L. d "Ozherville," the apparatus gave a trained person the opportunity to be in the water in any position without communication with the outside world and ... to work calmly, and if necessary, quickly emerge. " ?!

However, this man, undoubtedly far ahead of the technical capabilities of his time, was not the first to invent an autonomous breathing system for divers.

It turns out that long before L. d "Ogerville, more precisely - on June 17, 1808, a resident of Brest Pierre-Marie Toubulik patented a highly original underwater vehicle. Unfortunately, this" underwater animal "was not appreciated by his contemporaries, which is a pity. during the tests of the ichthyosaur, no air bubbles expelled by the aquanaut appeared on the surface, which means that Toubulik managed to create, perhaps for the first time in the world, a closed-cycle scuba gear operating on pure oxygen!

"I thought that by adding oxygen to the space in which it should be absorbed," wrote the inventor, "I would restore the composition of the air to the same as it was before." To do this, he found a way to continuously purify the air inside a diving suit, which outwardly resembled a small bell, dressed on top of a submariner and reaching his waist. It was continued by leather, richly greased and ending with metal hoops, sleeves and trousers - thus Toubulik wanted to ensure the tightness of his device.

While under water, the diver from time to time operated with a "turnstile" - a handle attached to a "bottle" in which oxygen was extracted from sea water. Apparently, Tubulik added an oxidizing agent to it, a mixture of soda dioxide and nickel sulfate and copper, which decomposed it into hydrogen (it was pumped out) and the oxygen needed by the diver. Unfortunately, Toubulik managed to keep his method secret ...

More detailed information has been preserved about the closed-cycle oxygen apparatus, created in 1878 by an officer of the British merchant fleet, G. Fluss. Outwardly, his system was similar to most previous and modern ones: a mask, a breathing bag, a compressed oxygen cylinder. To the latter, Fluss attached a box filled with caustic potassium, which is known to be an absorbent of carbon dioxide. Gluse was personally convinced of the effectiveness of this device, having performed the entire set of tests at various depths.

Since 1903, the model of the Fluss apparatus, modernized by the manager of the company R. Davis, began to be used by rescuers ... in mines; during the First World War it was used as a gas mask. In the end, Davis turned another sample of the Flux device into an individual means of rescuing submarine crews.

On May 9, 1827, a certain Jean-Baptiste Baudouin demonstrated his wooden submarine on the Seine. At the same time, he announced that the sailors, if necessary, could open the airlock hatch and go outside “My people use helmets,” Baudouin said, “which are supplied with air under a pressure of 100 atmospheres for an hour from two metal boxes (cylinders) fixed on their backs. "

I must say that a similar device was invented by a contemporary of Baudouin, a judge from La Rochelle, Coster, who devoted almost three decades to scuba diving. Only all his developments, often original, remained on paper, and their author once wrote with bitterness: "How many discoveries have been made, lost and made again ..."

http://nnm.ru/blogs/horror1017

In the 1910s, the oxygen supply regulator was improved and cylinders were made that could withstand gas pressure up to 200 atm. This allowed the autonomous apparatus with a closed circuit of the Fluss to become a standard rescue equipment for the British submarine fleet.

French naval officer Captain II Rank Le Prieure several decades later succeeded in constructing a breathing apparatus with a high-strength compressed air cylinder. Georges Comintes improved the Le Prieur apparatus. Instead of one cylinder for compressed air, he put two.

Despite the disadvantages of use and the risk of oxygen poisoning, the most popular were devices with a closed breathing circuit. During the Second World War, they were used by all the belligerents. At the same time, two Frenchmen, a naval officer and an engineer, were working on the invention of an apparatus with an open circuit of compressed air breathing. They were Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emile Gagnan. Working in the difficult conditions of German-occupied France, in 1943 they invented the first safe and effective breathing apparatus called scuba diving, which Cousteau later successfully used to dive to a depth of 60 meters without any harmful consequences.

The word "scuba" is a trademark in many countries of the world and means only the products of the company "Aqualung", however, in the territory of the former USSR and in Europe it has become common and denotes a class of breathing apparatus.

http://ru.wikipedia.org

Indeed, the history of scuba gear is the clearest confirmation of this.

At first glance, the answer to the question about the inventor of scuba gear seems obvious. Many in childhood watched films about Cousteau and know that he is the father of this invention. But is it?

Prerequisites for the creation of "water lungs"

Since ancient times, people have tried to increase the depth of diving and the time spent under water. Unfortunately, the human body has gone too far in its development from the inhabitants of the water element. Minute minutes and a few tens of meters of water column - that's all that is available to a person, and then provided that he is sufficiently trained.
But the depths of the oceans beckon with their riddles. Therefore, many inventors of antiquity thought about this problem. There were attempts to submerge it in water using special containers connected to a pump. At the end of the 18th century, a diving suit was invented, similar to the modern one. But all this was not the same: in all these devices, the diver was still connected to the ship.

Swimmer autonomy is the goal of inventors

The great Leonardo did not stand aside from this problem either. He was engaged in developments for the water element in two directions: providing breathing under water and devices for accelerating movement. The first was provided by the modernization of the structure of leather shoulder bags, inside which there was air; the second - by creating a semblance of modern fins, but not for the legs, but for the hands.

The structure of the scuba gear itself is an open-type system - the diver inhales air from the tank and exhales directly into the water. The basis of such an open-circuit apparatus is the membrane mechanism. Its development belongs to two people at the same time. Benoit Rouqueirol was a mining engineer and, trying to facilitate the work of rescuers in mines, in 1866 developed a mechanism that, using a membrane, lowered the pressure depending on the depth. Lieutenant Auguste Deneiruz served in the navy and, upon learning about the development of Rouqueirol, suggested using it for divers. It was this apparatus that Jules Verne described in his novel 20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The apparatus authored by Deneiruz-Rouqueirol, alas, allowed too little time to be under water - only a few minutes, therefore it was not widely used.

The emergence of modern scuba gear

In the twentieth century, the navy continued to use bulky diving equipment. Therefore, the officer of the French naval forces Yves-Paul Le Prieur continued the research of compatriots and in 1924 designed a breathing apparatus with a high-strength cylinder. In this invention, the swimmer had to regulate the flow of air himself.

Independently of the French, in 1939, the American Christian James Lambertsen invented a diving system, which was codenamed "SCUBA" (Self-Contained Underwater Oxygen Breathing Apparatus - independent underwater oxygen breathing apparatus). The use of this apparatus was limited to shallow water, as there was a high risk of oxygen poisoning. However, the unit was used successfully by US military divers during World War II.

During the war years in France they also remembered Le Prieur's invention, and in 1943 Georges Comintes created the Amphibia immersion system based on it. It consisted of two air cylinders connected together. The Comintes system was adopted by the French Navy.

Here we already remember about Cousteau. During the Second World War, he served as part of the French naval forces and was a fan of diving. A happy coincidence and the impetus for the invention of scuba gear was the marriage of Jacques-Yves Cousteau to Simone Melchior. Simone's father, a very rich man, provided Jacques-Yves with funds for research work, and also introduced him to the engineer Emile Gagnan. The Cousteau-Gagnan tandem gave birth to scuba gear in its modern form in 1943. The main difference from its predecessors was the valve, which supplied the swimmer with air at a pressure equal to the ambient pressure, which made it possible to dramatically increase the duration of the dive.

The word "scuba" is currently the patented name of the brand "Aqua Lung", therefore in many countries the word "scuba" (SCUBA) is often used, but we still call this device scuba diving.

Scuba
(Wikipedia help)

First surface air regulatorwas patented in 1866 by Benoit Rouqueirole, a French mining engineer who in 1860 invented a compressed air leakage regulator for use in polluted mines.

This device consisted of a container with compressed air and a hose. Later, Auguste Deneiruz adapted it for automatic air supply under water. The regulator worked on the principle of dry and wet chambers, diaphragm and valve. The system was driven by inhalation (low pressure) and exhalation (high pressure). The regulator was capable of making the pressure in the breathing apparatus equal to the ambient pressure. The inventors were granted patent N 63606 for the device. It was this apparatus that Jules Verne described in his novel “

This was stated by the Zaporozhets Anatoly Lisovoy and, as a confirmation, presented a document certified by the seal of the once top-secret organization created by order of Felix Dzerzhinsky himself

Established by "Iron Felix", a special underwater work expedition [EPRON] by the mid-1930s carried out all ship lifting, rescue, diving and, importantly, experimental work on all seas, rivers and lakes of the USSR. At EPRON there was also a diving technical school. It was in him that our fellow countryman, Pologovets Alexey Lisovoy, entered in 1932. And after finishing his studies, already being a diver of the secret Expedition, he started developing a "device for lowering under water to shallow depths."

"January 10, 1936 can be considered the day of the beginning of work on scuba diving"
- How is your father, - I ask the son of a once secret diver, - from the Pologov steppes to the Black Sea coast?
- In 1930, his family was dispossessed [his father was just 15 years old). They took a spacious house - it is still preserved in the village of Ivan Franko, near Pology; four cows, the garden is requisitioned. And the circumstances had to coincide like that: grandfather Ivan was not at home at the time of dispossession. He went to Crimea for treatment. Grandmother stayed on the farm, Maria Samsonovna. She looked and looked at what was happening and, having learned in the evening that the village committee of the poor decided to send the Lisov family into exile, gathered the children at night - my father and his three younger brothers - Nikolai, Grigory and Ivan, and at night in a chaise to the steppe took them away. And, having reached the nearest railway station, they moved to the Crimea, to their grandfather. Not far from Balaklava - behind the mountain, in the village of Komary, half a house was rented. Grandfather and grandmother worked in the vineyard. Father went to the bakery. Bread for Balaklava is pitch. Well, when I grew up, I entered the EPRON diving technical school.
- Did he start working on scuba diving on the Black Sea too?
- On the diagram of our father's "device for launching under water", kept in our family, is the date: January 10, 1936. It can be conditionally considered the day of the beginning of work on the manufacture of EPRON scuba gear. So, the father said, his underwater device was called. The tests did not take place on the Black Sea: after graduating from the diving technical school, my father was appointed to the main department of EPRON. But not to Leningrad, but to the city of Lomonosov. From there I went on business trips with my scuba gear - to work related to the lifting of sunken ships. This is what EPRON did in the first place. After all, Dzerzhinsky created an underwater expedition for special purposes initially to lift the British frigate "Prince" that sank in the water area of \u200b\u200bBalaklava in 1854. The Bolsheviks were sure that he had gone to the bottom with a huge cargo of gold on board. No gold was found on the Prince, but the Underwater Expedition remained. And she continued to search and raise sunken ships. And the father under water carried out their initial audit. Or intelligence, to put it another way. And subsequently prepared the ships for the rise. It was, you guessed it, an incredibly difficult job! To put it primitively, it boiled down to the following: the bottom under the ship had to be pierced with huge needles, to which the hoisting cables-winches clung. It is not an hour or two times that needs to be spent here, but much more. And, don't forget, the work went deep! Sometimes very significant. Did this affect your father's health? Of course yes.
- In the direction to the Moscow-Oka River Transport Administration it is said that “the device proposed by Comrade Lisov needs constructive changes.” With what they could be connected, do you know?
- My father made the tube from the balloon to the pulmonary and mouthpiece the usual one. To which the commission stated: it will bend under water at the most inopportune moment and block the air for the scuba diver. It was not difficult to solve the problem - it was enough to make the tube corrugated. So that she does not bend.
- Tell me, Anatoly Alekseevich, did the inventive diver Aleksey Lisovoy have security?
- Two soldiers with rifles constantly accompanied him. And he himself always had a revolver with him. But even increased precautions did not save the EPRON scuba gear: in October 1941 it disappeared.

"They paid for the scuba gear as much gold as it weighed."
- How did it happen?
- Father was sent on a business trip from Moscow to the Volga. I don’t remember exactly where. And it doesn't matter. At some intermediate station, it was necessary to make a transfer. The EPRON members got out of the train, handed over the suitcase with scuba diving to the storage room. And they returned to pick up - there is no suitcase! Rather, the other is given out. Similar, but not the same. For three days my father and the guards were on duty at the station - I thought that by mistake someone had taken something that was not theirs and would return it, having figured it out. Alas, no one returned anything. Returning to Moscow, my father reported the loss, but they did not organize additional searches - you can imagine what was happening in the capital in October 1941. There was no time for scuba gear!
- What did your father tell about the disappearance of the suitcase? He had an idea who might need it?
- It seems that the scuba suitcase went through Murmansk to England. And those who committed the ordered theft from the station storage room requested from the customer as much gold as the suitcase weighed. The father also did not exclude that it was his scuba gear that soon got to Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Having slightly modified the device for launching under water, in January 1943 he conducted underwater tests and patented scuba gear as his own invention.
- You mean, Cousteau knew about the existence of EPRON scuba gear?
- My father had information that during a pre-war trip to the USSR, Cousteau was interested in new technology. Not only diving. Any! He was looking for something ... which is nowhere else!
- Maybe he worked for intelligence?
- I didn't tell you that! But I heard that the French secret services considered the world famous explorer of the depths of the sea to be their man until the end of his days. By the way, when on July 10, 1985, French submarine saboteurs in the New Zealand port of Auckland mined the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, they were carrying Cousteau's aqualungs.

"As soon as my father's boat approached the ship, it exploded!"
- Did the war beat Lisovoy well the diver?
- At Stalingrad he got it! Twice he almost died in the waters of the Volga. The first case is connected with the fulfillment of a government task to find a barge with a cargo of canned food - it sank somewhere on the way to the city [well, but the front was in dire need of food]. The father, in diving gear, was conducting an underwater audit and preparing the barge for the ascent, and upstairs, on a boat, two soldiers pumped air into it. Then suddenly a German plane appears - the Nazis at that time had not yet reached Stalingrad, but their air scouts over the Volga were already patrolling. Probably, the pilot realized that a diving boat was working on the river, so on the second run he fired a burst from a machine gun on it. With fright, the soldiers in the bot forgot about everything in the world. About the diver - too. And they ran away! To the steppe. Left without air, my father managed to throw his diving boots - they are heavy! - and surface. Fishermen brought him a little alive to the shore
- The fugitives were caught?
- Well yes. And they wanted to use them right away. In EPRON, by the way, an unwritten law existed: if a diver who worked under water died, then those who provided his life on the surface were shot without trial. But the father of those who escaped, who betrayed, in fact, regretted his fighters: “I stayed alive, let them live too.
As for the second case, it had more tragic consequences for my father. At the beginning of March of the 43rd, a group of EPRON officers was called to the minesweeper, whose steering wheel was jammed in the middle of the Volga. Two sailors got on the oars of the boat, father - at the stern and swam. We approached the ship that had stopped running, and then it exploded! It turns out that the rudder of the minesweeper was jammed by a magnetic mine. It worked. When he woke up, his father took off his overcoat, which was wet and impeded his movement, and swam to the shore in the icy water. Then there was the hospital, the Kremlin clinic. With difficulty, the doctors got his father back on his feet, but until the end of his life he remained a disabled war of the second group. In this connection, having returned to Zaporozhye, he no longer worked - he was engaged in a garden, a vegetable garden. Died on April 18, 1989.
- To scuba gear, it turns out, he never returned?
- Why didn’t come back! After the war, he was restoring a working model of a scuba gear from memory. And the original layout of the "device for launching under water" [dated January 10, 1936] survived. It was made not on paper, but on oilcloth. Her father always carried her with him - in his inner pocket. So, my father had a direct relationship to the first serial Soviet scuba gear AVM-1 [naval scuba gear], work on which was carried out in Orekhovo-Zuevo. Unfortunately, there is no official confirmation of this. Only my father's stories have been preserved in my memory. Well, after Orekhovo-Zuevo, the production of aqualungs was also established in Ukraine - in Voroshilovgrad. And they began to enter the Navy en masse. Including submarines, of course, where scuba gear was used as a means of rescue.
Vladimir SHAK
[Newspaper "MIG", Zaporozhye]

Diving college cadet Alexey Lisovoy, spring 1932

Alexey Lisovoy testing a deep-sea spacesuit vehicle, summer 1935, Black Sea

To this topic
From the official direction to the Moscow-Oka River Transport Administration, issued on December 17, 1936 by the head of the 6th department of the EPRON Main Directorate:
“I inform you that on December 14, 1936, a commission in the presence of a diver comrade Lisovy tested the device proposed by comrade Lisov, and the test results showed that the device can be used FOR LOWERING UNDER WATER [highlighted by me - author] to shallow depths, but it needs a number of constructive changes listed in the act. Since Comrade Lisovoy intends to continue working on improving the device in order to eliminate
the shortcomings indicated in the act independently, I consider Comrade Lisovoy's stay in Leningrad optional. For further work comrade Lisovoy needs to create the appropriate conditions, as well as provide the necessary material ”

EPRON history
EPRON was created by order of Felix Dzerzhinsky No. 528 dated December 17, 1923 in Balaklava. On January 10, 1931, it was transferred to the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of Railways, and on February 23, to the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of Water Transport.
Since 1942, EPRON has been called the Emergency Rescue Service of the USSR Navy. And the diving courses that existed under EPRON in 1930 were reorganized into a naval diving technical school [the deputy head there was Konstantin Pavlovsky, the first Soviet diving doctor].

Underwater breathing apparatus
The first underwater breathing apparatus was patented in 1865 by the French engineer Benoit Rouqueirol and the naval lieutenant Auguste Deneirouz. Its disadvantage: the apparatus was connected to the surface by a hose through which low pressure air was supplied to the cylinder. Nevertheless, it was Ruceyrol and Deneiruz who were granted a patent [No. 63606] for scuba gear - "water lung" [Latin "aqua" - water, English "lang" - light].
In 1926, naval officer Ivle Prijor used scuba diving with a continuous supply of air under pressure from a Michelin cylinder - at that time it was used to quickly inflate tires, and declared himself the first light divers. Despite the fact that Priyor's scuba diving allowed a person to be under water for only ten minutes at a depth of 12 meters, his model remained in service with the French fleet until 1933.
Only naval officer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and engineer Emile Gagnan improved the scuba gear in the early 40s, giving it a well-known look. On January 8, 1943, the device was tested in one of the rivers near Paris. After the modification of the scuba gear, Cousteau was patented and since 1946 it has become a commercial product.
In the USSR, the first domestic scuba gear AVM-1 "Podvodnik-1" was put into serial production in 1957 [development of the Orekhovo-Zuevsky KB for oxygen equipment. Project leaders Alexander Soldatenkov and Yuri Kitaev]. A little later, a second scuba diving appeared, which received the name "Ukraine" [development of the Voroshilovgrad plant of mining and rescue equipment, Project leader Alexander Gnamm].

The inventor of scuba gear or autonomous portable breathing apparatus for underwater breathing can be considered a person who has created light equipment for a diver, which allows him to descend to a depth of three hundred meters. It is generally accepted that he is the Frenchman Jacques Yves Cousteau.

Background to the invention

For swimming and working underwater, it was required to create various devices with which a diver could breathe. Ordinary air was supplied by means of hoses, there were no technologies for its compression yet.

There was no metal for the manufacture of a compact compressed air cylinder, a mechanism for regulating the pressure of such air to the desired level. By the beginning of the 20th century, such equipment had been invented.

It was necessary to ensure: the safety of the underwater swimmer, reduce the risk of injuries and deaths, the ability of the diver to act autonomously, without communication with the surface, to reduce the dimensions of the equipment for being under water.

Despite the fact that by the beginning of World War II, workable equipment for divers had been created and even in some countries it was put into service. However, these products were not perfect. A lightweight, reliable and compact diving equipment was required.

Who invented scuba gear

The elements of the future scuba gear were developed mainly by such French and English inventors:
The French Benoit Rouqueirol and Auguste Deneirouz in the 19th century developed an underwater air supply regulator
The Englishman Henry Fluss invented a workable rebreather - an underwater vehicle that uses oxygen and a closed breathing circuit.In the 20th century, compressed air cylinders appeared that could withstand 200 atmospheres, and an improved oxygen supply regulator
French naval officer Le Prieur created an apparatus for breathing air, which was pumped into a cylinder under pressure, and Georges Comintes improved this apparatus by installing two cylinders.

When he invented scuba gear

The process of inventing the future scuba gear began in the 19th century and took less than a hundred years. Thus, the air supply regulator was patented in 1866, the first successfully operating underwater apparatus for breathing pure oxygen was invented in 1878. Rugged compressed air cylinders developed in 1910.

In 1943, Frenchman Jacques Yves Cousteau, together with his friend Emile Gagnan, invented a safe diving apparatus called scuba diving. It was the prototype of modern safe and reliable underwater breathing apparatus. It used the main developments of its predecessors.

Created by J.I. Cousteau's apparatus was constantly improved and successfully tested by its creator during ocean research.

Outcome

Jacques Yves Cousteau is quite rightly considered the inventor of scuba gear. It was he who managed to combine all the achievements for swimming a person under water. As a result, a perfect and safe apparatus has appeared, which allows you to successfully perform various works under water.

Devices called scuba diving are widely used in industry and construction, military affairs. Thanks to them, underwater sports have been widely developed. Diving, thanks to the safety of scuba gear, has become one of the favorite pastimes.

Scuba, created by J. Cousteau, has become the main element of free swimming under water, used all over the world. Its main parts are:

a cylinder (reservoir) made of durable metal for storage under pressure up to 20 liters of compressed air or breathing mixture
a regulator that reduces the pressure from the cylinder to a comfortable level for the swimmer
air supply hose with a mouthpiece inserted into the scuba diver's mouth
scuba has a shoulder strap for attaching to the body
devices for compensating the forces acting on it during immersion and on the surface.

The sophisticated design of modern scuba gear allows you to set records for diving duration and diving depth. So, in 1992, the longest diving was recorded, which lasted 69 days. The deepest scuba diving depth of 332.4 meters was recorded in September 2014.

At first glance, the answer to the question about the inventor of scuba gear seems obvious. Many in childhood watched films about Cousteau and know that he was the father of this invention. But is it?

Prerequisites for the creation of "water lungs"

Since ancient times, people have tried to increase the depth of diving and the time spent under water. Unfortunately, the human body has gone too far in its development from the inhabitants of the water element. Minute minutes and a few tens of meters of water column - that's all that is available to a person, provided that he is sufficiently trained. But the depths of the oceans beckon with their riddles. Therefore, many inventors of antiquity thought about this problem. There were attempts to submerge it in water using special containers connected to a pump. At the end of the 18th century, a diving suit was invented, similar to the modern one. But all this was not the same: in all these devices, the diver was still connected to the ship.

Swimmer autonomy is the goal of inventors

The structure of the scuba gear itself is an open-type system - the diver inhales air from the tank and exhales directly into the water. The basis of such an open-circuit apparatus is the membrane mechanism. Its development belongs to two people at the same time. Benoit Rouqueirol was a mining engineer and, trying to facilitate the work of rescuers in mines, in 1866 he developed a mechanism that, using a membrane, lowered the pressure depending on the depth. Lieutenant Auguste Deneiruz served in the navy and, upon learning about the development of Rouqueirol, suggested using it for divers. It was this apparatus that Jules Verne described in his novel 20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The apparatus authored by Deneiruz-Rouqueirol, alas, allowed too little time to be under water - only a few minutes, therefore it was not widely used.

The emergence of modern scuba gear

Independently of the French, in 1939, American Christian James Lambertsen invented a diving system that was codenamed "SCUBA" (Self-Contained Underwater Oxygen Breathing Apparatus). The use of this apparatus was limited to shallow water, as there was a high risk of oxygen poisoning. However, the unit was successfully used by US military divers during World War II.

The word "scuba" is currently the patented name of the brand "Aqua Lung", therefore in many countries the word "scuba" (SCUBA) is often used, but we still call this device scuba diving.

Magazine

Prerequisites for the creation of "water lungs"

Swimmer autonomy is the goal of inventors

The emergence of modern scuba gear

Background to the invention

Who invented scuba gear

When he invented scuba gear

Outcome

Prerequisites for the creation of "water lungs"

Swimmer autonomy is the goal of inventors

The emergence of modern scuba gear

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