Scuba Explained

Scuba – What does it mean and where does it come from?

The word SCUBA itself is an abbreviation for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.
Today’s scuba diving equipment for recreational diving consists of a tank, filled with compressed air, and a Jacket or BCD to hold the tank and help to become neutrally buoyant under water. They both are connected through an air hose to the so called “demand regulator”. The demand regulator controls the flow of air, filling the diver’s lungs under water. Add a pair of fins, a diving mask and maybe a wetsuit and you’re ready to go scuba diving. This wasn’t always so easy though…

Scuba Timeline – Important Milestones of the Scuba Diving History:

The first time we learn about someone staying under water for longer than the time of one single breath, is in Greek History. Around 500 BC during one of many wars, the Greek soldier Scyllis was taken prisoner, aboard the ship of the Persian King Xerxes. Scyllis learned that Xerxes was to attack the Greek fleet; he grabbed a knife and jumped overboard. The Persians soldiers, who where searching the surface, could not find him and presumed him dead. Scyllis though had used a hollow reed as snorkel to remain under water. He surfaced at night, cutting each ship of his enemies loose with his stolen knife. According to the Greek saga, Scyllis then swam nine miles back to re-join the Greek fleet; he so heroically had saved from harm.

Around 1300 AD Persian divers were using eye goggles, made from polished shells or turtles shields. The Persians also used a hollow reed to breathe under water. But this still wasn’t scuba yet. Another 400 years had to go by to give the word scuba a meaning.

People couldn’t stay out of the water, so around 1530; the first diving bell was invented. A barrel or bell was sunk into the water and a ‘diver’ could undertake some limited research underwater or gather some food, swimming back to the bell to catch a breath in between, until the air was not breathable anymore.

A man called Von Guericke developed the first working air pump in 1650. This air pump was brought to good use by Robert Boyle, a man all divers will get to know better if they decide to go for a professional scuba diving career. Boyle was an English physicist and the inventor of “Boyle’s Law”. One day he observed a gas bubble in the eye of a viper that had been compressed and then decompressed again. In his notes he wrote down: “I have seen a very apparent bubble moving from side to side in the aqueous humor of the eye of a viper at the time when this animal seemed violently distressed in the receiver from which the air had been exhausted.”
This was the first recorded observation of decompression sickness or, as we call it today, “the bends.”

In 1772, Sieur Freminet invented the first re-breathing device that recycled the exhaled air inside a barrel. Yet the invention didn’t have all its security measures in place though and the inventor died on “lack of oxygen” after testing his own apparatus for twenty minutes.

In 1825, English inventor, William James designed another self contained breathing device It was a cylindrical iron “belt”, that was attached to a copper helmet. The belt held about 450psi of air, enough for a seven-minute dive. By the 1830’s the surface-supplied air helmet was perfected well enough to allow extensive salvage work underwater.

In 1876, an Englishmen named Henry Fleuss invented the first closed circuit, oxygen re-breather. His invention was originally intended to be used for the repair of an iron door in a flooded ship chamber. After the successful repair, Fleuss then made the fatal decision to take his invention to a thirty-foot deep dive underwater. He died from oxygen toxicity; pure oxygen is toxic to humans under pressure.

Two years later, in 1878, Frenchman Paul Bert published the book “La Pression Barometrique”, a 1000-page work containing his physiologic studies of pressure changes. He shows that decompression sickness is due to formation of nitrogen gas bubbles, and suggests, for the first time, gradual ascent as one way to prevent decompression sickness. Bert also shows that limb pain, caused by DCS, can be relieved by recompression.

Ehrich Weiss, better know under his stage name, Harry Houdini – the famous magician, was also an inventor. Houdini’s invention of the “diver’s suit” permited divers, in case of danger, to quickly get themselves of the suit, while submerged and swim to safely. We write the year 1921.

In 1926, the French navy officer, Yves Leprieur invented a system using a 2000 psi steel tank, which flowed air into a full-face mask

In 1937, the Austrian Hans Hass enters the scene and brings the underwater world to the public eye. During a vacation in the south of France, he learned about “goggling”, the newest sport of breath-hold spear fishing. Hass soon becomes a star among his disciples. In the following year, in the Adriatic Sea off Yugoslavia, Hans Hass is the first man to shoots photographs under water with his self-made camera housing. For his dive he used a surface-supplied open diving helmet, which he designed and fabricated himself. Only one year later Hass shoots the world’s first underwater documentary film; “Stalking beneath the Sea” which is followed by countless films and publications in the years to come.

In 1939, American, Dr. Christian Lambertsen designed the first fully functional ‘Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus’ for the U.S. military. It was part of secret war plans under the code name SCUBA. Lambertsen’s scuba gear worked for shallow dives, but too much oxygen in the gas mixture killed the divers in greater depth.

Two years later, in 1941, Hans Hass comes back to set yet another milestone in scuba diving history. He teams up with Hermann Stellzner and begins diving with a “Draeger Oxygen Rebreather”, which he modified together with Stellzner. The two coined the term, “swim-diving” to differentiate their activities from the surface-supplied “walk-diving.”

The last stage in our journey through time belongs to the two men who are widely responsible for today’s scuba equipment. In 1943, the two Frenchmen, Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan invented the so called demand regulator. Their regulator was connected to three cylinders, each holding 2,500 psi of air. As the name states, the demand regulator would only release air, when needed – thus by breathing in. The complete diving equipment, or “autonomous diving suit” with the pressure regulator, was called the “Aqua-lung”. The “Aqua-lung” is the basis for scuba diving equipment used today. Historians refer to Cousteau Gagnan as and the “Founding Fathers of Modern Scuba Diving Gear”.