Until the 1940's the only self-contained (not surface supplied) diving equipment available was the O2 Rebreather. It was used by various militaries, primarily for shallow depth insertion of 'frogmen'.
Jacques Cousteau, with his collaborator Emile Gagnan, is heralded as the pioneer of modern open circuit diving. He had the ingenious notion of attaching the breathing regulator used by fighter pilots (1940's) as a method for controlling the delivery of air, on-demand, from a cylinder of compressed air. He termed this equipment 'Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus' (or SCUBA). It was also popularly called the "
Aqua Lung". The offical date for development was 1943.
Cousteau continued to pioneer the development of SCUBA diving. His book,
Silent World is an informative, interesting and funny chronical of his adventures, calamaties and triumphs. It describes the first scuba encounters with nitrogen narcosis ("
Rapture of the Deep"), along with oxygen toxicity, contaminated air and decompression illness.
Along with
Hans Hass, Cousteau provided the first popularized documentaries of the underwater world.
Since the initial development of SCUBA, the basic premise and operation of the equipment has essentially not changed, although it has been refined as technology has progressed.
The most important addition to the common set of SCUBA equipment has been that of a Buoyancy Compensating Device (BCD). This enables the diver to add or subtract air to a bladder, providing control in the water column as the diver can be positive, neutral or negatively buoyant. THE BCD is controlled by the addition of a low pressure hose from the primary regulator into an inflating valve on the BCD.
