Frenchmen, Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emile Gagnan, combined an improved demand regulator with a high pressure air tank (from an earlier design by another French naval officer named LePrieur) and created the first truly efficient open circuit scuba system capable of performing to depths of approximately 180 feet in France in 1943 while under German occupation during WW II.
After the war, Cousteau patented the design and it began to be sold worldwide. You could easily get one from Sears the same way you could purchase a toaster and both would come with instruction booklets. Buy one. Read the book. Go diving. Fortunately, the majority of the people doing that were highly physically fit, former military or commercial divers, lifeguards, surfers, freedivers/spearos, scientists or others with lots of watermanship skills or who knew those already diving and were taught by them.
Side note: The earliest ascent rate was 60 feet per minute. Today it is 30 feet per minute. Why? The 60 feet per minute ascent rate came about because the U.S. Navy divers employing scuba wanted to ascend at 120 feet per minute because that was a comfortable swim speed. The Navy tenders wanted to hoist their hard hat divers at 30 feet per minute because that was a comfortable cranking speed. So, the Navy wanted one set of tables and one speed for both types of divers and they compromised on 60 feet per minute. Years of sport divers suffering DCS led to more research thanks to the combined efforts of the agencies, DAN, U.S., British and Canadian navies and others to discover that safety stops and 30 feet per minute ascent rates make diving safer. However, current research is showing that deep stops makes diving even more safe and I'm sure that will be the future training trend in recreational diving.
Another side note: The 130 feet sport diving limit is a carry over from the days when the U.S. Navy discovered that the Cousteau/Gagnan regulator experienced some decreased performance and decided that would be the depth limit for scuba operations after which surface supplied hard hat divers would be deployed.
Interest began to grow in sport diving and as a result Al Tillman created the first organized scuba courses in 1954 for L.A. County and the first instructor course called the Underwater Instructor's Certification Course or UICC. Both programs oly existed in L.A. County. There was a need for a national program so the Council for National Cooperation in Aquatics was formed and put a program in the works for the YMCA. The YMCA had long been teaching swimming so it became the ideal organization to add scuba training on a national scale. Today, the YMCA is the official CMAS affiliate in the U.S.A. CMAS is a world federation dedicated to overseeing scuba training. CMAS seeks to ensure higher standards and assign equivalency ratings between the various certification agencies worldwide since various agencies have different standards, but it has become incredibly political and other agencies that were once CMAS such as PDIC in the US and BSAC in the UK fell into disfavor. CMAS also used to oversee a lot of freediving training and competitions, but AIDA has taken over the competitive role.
While the YMCA program was being developed, All Tilmann and Niel Hess recruited instructors through Skin Diver magazine. Divers sent in outlines for training and if approved they became members of the National Diving Patrol. No official training was needed to be an instructor. Just a sane outline and teaching philosophy. In 1960, the NDP changed its name to the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI).
Note: Around the same time, the single hose regulator was developed.
John Gaffney recognized that for the sport of diving to grow what was needed was to make it more available to people. He wanted instructors to be trained to instruct, divers to be trained better, equipment to be sold and serviced through retail facilities, and clean air fills to be available. In 1962 he created the National Association of Skin Diving Schools which later became the National Association of Scuba Diving Schools and formed an association of retail/service dive stores. He also hired former Navy diving instructors to teach divers how to instruct at a facility in California he called the Professional Diving Instructors College. NASDS was the first agency to require many of the safety items we take for granted today such as SPGs, BCDs, and additional second stages to be implemented. In the 1970s the college broke away and became the Professional Diving Instructors Corporation (PDIC). NASDS was purchased by Scuba Schools Interational (SSI) just a few years ago.
By the late 1960s, television shows such as Sea Hunt, Flipper, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and movies like "Thunderball" and "Daring Game" created a huge public interest in scuba diving. While these new divers were adventurous in spirit, they lacked the water skills the earlier breed of divers had. A new type of training was needed to make diving available to these new underwater adventurers. In 1967, PADI began to meet this demand. At the same time, PADI realized that because of the large numbers of divers/instructors who were in the military and stationed overseas, it had the chance to expand globally and bring the sport of diving to nations that didn't have adequate or existing scuba training and began to expand itself through military bases.
With new divers with less water skills taking up the sport, what was needed was more water time for students. Sea Trek International became the first organization to require a minimum of 8 open water dives. But, while agencies such as STI appeared and failed,travel to warm water areas became the more popular place to dive. Calm conditions and equipment innovations have made diving less arduous and more available to more people and larger age groups. PADI flourished thanks to the combination of global marketing, less militant training, advances in gear and the diving dollars of the average diver who no longer is a Mark Spitz or a fictional Mike Nelson nor wants to be treated as such.
Or... do they?
While the average diver was enjoying the reefs and wrecks of Bermuda, Grand Cayman, Bonaire, and Roatan there was still a small group of divers keeping things kind of hush hush diving air down to the maximum limits of narcosis to explore wrecks and caves. Many of these were the pioneers of the sport going back to the 60s, 70s and in some cases the 50s and the 40s. They had aged somewhat and were no longer the aqua endurance machines they once were, but the innovations in equipment allowed them to go deeper and stay longer than they had in their youth. Their pioneer spirit was still alive and under the table and in secretive meetings away from the normal agencies they had been gaining access to mixed gases and various tables. Just like when they started teaching diving in the first place to small pockets of friends, these pioneers began to teach the use of mixed gases and multiple cylinders to their students and friends.
"Technical Diving" was born when Mike Menundo coined the term in an issue of Aquacorps magazine. The divers who engaged in this activity were brought back into a philosophy of solid water skills, solid rescue skills, and rigorous training. However, deaths mounted as divers pushed the limits of their equipment and gases like test pilots to discover what these limits were. Information was slow to make its way around the technical community until the mainstream use of the internet. But, the arguing began as one group found one way to do something and lashed out at other groups who were doing something else. Deaths were blamed on everyone and fueled by America's love affair with the law over common sense many fingers were pointed and court battles ensued. Court battles were also being fought to dive gases, dive certain wrecks like Gary Gentile's victory to dive the USS Monitor in 240 feet on trimix against the US Government, and between recreational agencies and technical agencies. DEMA blacklisted these tech groups at one point. Disinformation abounded. Guys such as Tom Mount and Brett Gilliam formed the International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers (IANTD) and Technical Diving International (TDI) respectively. I forget who formed ANDI.
The recreational agencies panicked. The last thing they needed was competition in an otherwise dwindling diving market. But, the bastard children were out in the open so to speak. It was verbally decided that the technical agencies would teach their niche and the recreational agencies would teach theirs. OW - Instructor at the recreational level and deep air - trimix instructor at the technical level. But, something happened... nitrox the death gas turned out to be a good idea! The recreational agencies realized it was simple to use and to teach... um... recreationally.
All of a sudden 32%, EAN 32, Nitrox I, NOAA Nitrox I, NN-I and 36%, EAN 36, Nitrox II, NOAA Nitrox II, NN-II became available at local dive centers.
BOOM! This resulted in the technical agencies deciding to teach at the recreational level level like Scuba Diving International (SDI) coming from TDI and then recreational agencies going to techical diving with NAUI Tech and PADI DSAT.
The problem now is that the average diver, who would never have thought of going to 300+ feet while enjoying a Peter Hughes' luxury vacation has an ego that cannot be left behind. So, just as James bond looked cool diving 40 feet down in the Bahamas in 1967, those tech guys look really cool today and everyone wants to emerge from the water with tales of epic decompressions, multiple bottles, and be able to pee a bit farther than the other guy.
This means that dive pros like myself have to dive deeper and stay longer, invest far more money than we get paid in lots of expensive toys and even more expensive training, spend all of our free time in decompression just so we can validate our instructor cards and experience thereby keeping our jobs. But, for those of us with the water skills (because we actually spend a lot of our time there rather than in an office) we're losing ground to those who do live in offices and dive on the side, because they have the money to blow on gear, cards and become less qualified tech instructors than those of us who are impoverished lifeguards, surfers, divers, and water jocks with thin waistlines and who can swim 500 yards in less than 7 minutes, 4000 yards through heavy surf, have lots of experience with making rescues and crewing on boats, but who can't afford trimix!
So, we're back to 1967 and an agency will have to be created to water down tech diving this time for the general public... who needs to tip DMs more money so we can afford to keep our jobs by the way!
Next installment... the history of cave diving!
Trace
