Scuba diving 100 years from now?

[Sam Miller III]

[QUOTE=RJP;7517465
.... Given that 99.9% of divers are still diving essentially the same demand-valve regulator that J.Y. Cousteau used in 1943...
.
...

I certainly enjoy and read almost all your post and agree with almost all of them. May I suggest that you ...

Please recall that JYCs bubble machine was almost an exact copy of the 1867 Rouquayrol-Denarouse Aerphore SCUBA unit

The major changes was high pressure air and a second hose to make a complete loop ( ie Double hose regulator)

There were at least 3 maybe more SCUBA units prior to the God of Underwater meeting with Emile to convert a Gasogene regulator which was a copy of the Rouquayrol-Denarouse regulator into an Aqua lung .

SDM

 

[RJP]

Subtleties of the technology notwithstanding... a demand-valve regulator is a demand-valve regulator.



Innovation is correctly measured in terms of not "what it is" but rather what it lets the user DO. My AquaLung Legends don't allow me to do anything different than a reg from 20, 40, or 60 years ago.

 

[Akimbo]

... Please recall that JYCs bubble machine was almost an exact copy of the 1867 Rouquayrol-Denarouse Aerphore SCUBA unit

The major changes was high pressure air and a second hose to make a complete loop ( ie Double hose regulator)...

Sam, those are the two things that made a failed design actually work. As you know, the first design that Gagnan and Cousteau tested only had one hose but free-flowed in several positions. Gagnan, not Cousteau, immediately recognized what was happening and added the exhaust hose routed the other side of the diaphragm -- as the story goes anyway. If you think about it, that is a testament to the engineering prowess of Gagnan who was a non-diver/goggler.

The major difference between the "demand" regulator and the "pressure reduction regulators" of the pre-WWII era was the differential pressure they were designed to activate at. The concept of many of those regulators is fundamentally the same as the Gagnan/Cousteau regulator. You can be sure that the patents filed by Air Liquide would have had much broader claims if this was conceptually the first demand regulator. It was however the first successful demand regulator for use underwater. There is some debate whether the demand regulators for firefighting, aviation, and mine safety actually predated the Air Liquide/Gagnon patents.

I am hard-pressed to think of anything in the diving industry that is fundamentally innovative. The industry is too small to support that level of R&D. Virtually everything in diving is borrowed technology whether it be in material science, manufacturing technologies, computer science, or mechanical engineering.

 

[RJP]

The industry is too small to support that level of R&D. Virtually everything in diving is borrowed technology whether it be in material science, manufacturing technologies, computer science, or mechanical engineering.

Innovation doesn't necessarily need to be "colors that have never been seen before, or words that have never been spoken" -- most true innovation involves taking thinking or technology from one discipline and applying it to something unrelated. In many ways, some of the most innovative innovations have been business model or process applications. Look at Uber - they didn't invent the car, or the taxi, or the phone, or the idea of an app. There's nothing fundamentally "innovative" about Uber... other than the idea to combine a bunch of existing stuff.

 

[JohnN]

BSAC will still consider long hoses and "Primary Donate" evil

 

[Searcaigh]

I saw other divers doing similar or more serious dives. We were the only ones who were not on rebreathers, and I had to look with envy at how much less gear they had and (especially) how much less helium they needed. Maybe that era is already close to being upon us.

Although I concur with the less Helium point, the amount of gear a rebreather diver carries is as much as on OC.



Rebreathers will have to seriously come down in price and simpler to set up time wise in order to increase their popularity. Given the fast advances in technology over the past 10-20 years I am quite sure this will happen at some point.

I like diving with rebreather divers it makes my gas planning easier

 

[KenGordon]

BSAC will still consider long hoses and "Primary Donate" evil

There will still be more noise than signal on forums.

More seriously though, there may be no coral left by then. There will be a gap between the demise of coral and coastal cities becoming good sites.

For example

https://carnegiescience.edu/news/oceans-may-soon-be-more-corrosive-when-dinosaurs-died

Although the first time I saw this pointed out was Brisbane 2001.

 

[kensuf]

Living in Florida, I expect that rising sea levels will mean I have to use scuba to get to and from my work.

 

[Sam Miller III]

!) It was an established fact that Emile was a very knowledgeable engineer who was the brains behind the Aqua Lung. I met him once while I was either a consultant or the Dive training officer for US Divers (Aqua Lung) he was some what shy and introverted and our meeting and conversation was very brief.

Contrast that to JYC..the eternal self promoter supper egotist. But he sure was a world wide super promoter of diving

2) As you know the Aqua Lung was not the first ...Ricchi in 1918, Le Prieu in the 1920s and Commeinhes in the 1940s

3) Commeinhes produced a wonderful bubble machine; double tanks ( could be replaced UW ) a faring around the tanks, SPG, large straps. He dove the unit to 174 feet in 1942 ...A year before JYC "invented " the Aqua Lung.

The world would probably be diving the Commeinhes unit if it had not been for his loyalty to his country and he was KIA in 1944, while JYC was basking in the sun in southern France . Never the ,less the French Navy used the Commeinhes units until 1956.

4) The original Aqua Lung as originally imported to the US was one dangerous bubble machine. It wasn't until Rene's engineers discovered patent flaws and obtained the rights to produce the Aqua Lung in Chicago USA which resulted in the "DA" regulator.

The rest is diving history..

SDM

Sam, those are the two things that made a failed design actually work. As you know, the first design that Gagnan and Cousteau tested only had one hose but free-flowed in several positions. Gagnan, not Cousteau, immediately recognized what was happening and added the exhaust hose routed the other side of the diaphragm — as the story goes anyway. If you think about it, that is a testament to the engineering prowess of Gagnan who was a non-diver/goggler.

The major difference between the “demand” regulator and the “pressure reduction regulators” of the pre-WWII era was the differential pressure they were designed to activate at. The concept of many of those regulators is fundamentally the same as the Gagnan/Cousteau regulator. You can be sure that the patents filed by Air Liquide would have had much broader claims if this was conceptually the first demand regulator. It was however the first successful demand regulator for use underwater. There is some debate whether the demand regulators for firefighting, aviation, and mine safety actually predated the Air Liquide/Gagnon patents.

I am hard-pressed to think of anything in the diving industry that is fundamentally innovative. The industry is too small to support that level of R&D. Virtually everything in diving is borrowed technology whether it be in material science, manufacturing technologies, computer science, or mechanical engineering.

 

[agilis]

Innovation doesn't necessarily need to be "colors that have never been seen before, or words that have never been spoken" -- most true innovation involves taking thinking or technology from one discipline and applying it to something unrelated. In many ways, some of the most innovative innovations have been business model or process applications. Look at Uber - they didn't invent the car, or the taxi, or the phone, or the idea of an app. There's nothing fundamentally "innovative" about Uber... other than the idea to combine a bunch of existing stuff.

There is also nothing fundamentally good about Uber either. It's essentially people scratching for a living at the margins of a society which has learned to dispense with most employees in a world which leaves vanishingly few opportunities for self-employment beyond subsistence activity or criminal activity.

Being an Uber driver might be a good way to pick up a few extra bucks, but will it support a family, provide a dependble stable income, or cover health care costs?

I've been in third world countries where hordes of impoverished people compete for the opportunity to carry your luggage or perform some other menial service. That's all this barter economy really is, except that it exists in the slowly developing wreckage of wealthy societies than have little or no use for most people, people who pathetically expect that the new technology will somehow find a place for them when all indications are that it is doing the exact reverse.

We live in interesting times, in the Confucian sense.