History of diving

[Rich Keller]

This web site might help.

DivingHeritage - the worlds largest virtual diving helmet museum

 

[CT-Rich]

The book Neutral Buoyancy (Tim Ecott)has a pretty comprehensive history of diving and some of underlying science history.

 

[Sam Miller III]

The first two chapters of my book, SEALAB: America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor, give a good overview (in my opinion!) of the physics and physiology involved along with a history of diving (Chapter 1 is available on my website and the first few pages of Chapter 2, which deals more with the history of diving, you can see on Amazon, fyi.)

The most comprehensive history of diving is arguably Deep Diving and Submarine Operations: A Manual for Deep Sea Divers and Compressed Air Workers, by Sir Robert Davis, now in a 9th edition. It's like a little encyclopedia of diving, filled with 600-plus pages of facts, illustrations and anecdotes and infused with some wry wit and humor. A much more concise but thorough history can be found in Robert C. Martin's The Deep-Sea Diver: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. As someone else mentioned in this thread, the U.S. Navy Diving Manual is a good source - well organized, clearly written and more readable than you might expect of a military "manual." And be sure to check out back issues of the Historical Diving Society USA's fine magazine, recently renamed The Journal of Diving History. The special issue on Jacques Cousteau, for example, is well worth a read.

Also, an earlier Scubaboard thread that asked for "essential scuba related nonfiction" got a lot of good suggestions that someone compiled into a list within the thread, as you should be able to see here:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/book-media-reviews/443924-essential-scuba-related-nonfiction-3.html

Hope this info helps. . .

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Great complete listing of historical sources.

I do believe the OP was interested in the history of Recreational Diving. This activity can be traced back many years as subsistence diving in the tropical climates, but the advent of modern recreational diving owes it origin to the 1938 Gilpatric publication and other inventive men of that era.


SDM

 

[tplyons]

The first two chapters of my book, SEALAB: America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor, give a good overview (in my opinion!) of the physics and physiology involved along with a history of diving (Chapter 1 is available on my website and the first few pages of Chapter 2, which deals more with the history of diving, you can see on Amazon, fyi.)

I'm almost done with Ben's book and was fascinated by the first two chapters, which filled in some missing tidbits about my diving knowledge.

Other than this, the US Navy Diving Manual is a wealth of knowledge (and can be found online in PDF form instead of the expensive bound copies) as well as Deco for Divers: Decompression Theory and Physiology by Mark Powell. This provides a good history over the years of diving, and the physiological problems and solutions. More of a history on the development of dive tables, but in my opinion, critical for understanding the history of our sport.