Bob DBF
Contributor
The PADI RDP was designed to make recreational diving possible. Before the PADI RDP, there was pretty much only the US Navy tables. Try to imagine what recreational diving looked like back then.
Getting a bit carried away implying recreational diving was not possible prior to the PADI RDP. I'm pretty sure diving was popular before it was released.
Before the RDP, Navy tables were used, however they were not the same as the Navy tables used now. The biggest difference on the tables was the limitation on multiple deep dives without incurring deco. I didn't have an issue with that for quite a while and the solution was was learning deco from a different set of Navy tables in the manual.
The Navy tables are the standard other algorithms are compared with because the NEDU bias been researching and revising them for over a hundred years. The only issue is that their tables are for working divers trying to maximize their first dive time, if it takes longer for a Navy diver to finish a job, you just send down the next duty diver. Not optimal for recreational divers but it worked well for a lot of recreational divers for a long time.
Bob