Created scuba gear. Five major inventions of Jacques Cousteau. The emergence of modern scuba gear

Since ancient times, people have been attracted by the depths of the sea. There is not a single people living in coastal areas who have not created fairy tales, myths and legends about the underwater kingdom. As for the actual exploration of this mysterious world, it was limited by the capabilities of the human body. For ordinary people, the depths were closed, because even the most trained mollusk and sponge catchers could dive under water no more than 30 m and remain there for a maximum of 5 minutes.

But the impossible never stopped the pioneers. The simplest device for breathing underwater was an ordinary straw. Using it, a person could stay under water as long as he wanted, but without diving to a depth greater than the length of the straw. It was not very comfortable to breathe through it, and besides, it could be overwhelmed by a wave. Later, air-filled bags made of dense material began to be used for breathing, and a load in the hands or in a bag behind the back made it possible to increase the speed and depth of immersion. A leather wineskin with a breathing tube was described in 77 BC. e. Roman writer and scientist Pliny the Elder.

Divers were very often used for military purposes, for example, in 1191. they served as postmen, providing communication with the outside world for the fortress of Acre, besieged by Richard the Lionheart.

Helmet for deep sea diving. XIX century

Assyrian relief of the 9th century. depicting swimmers breathing underwater using air cushions.

During the Battle of Les Andelys in 1203, combat swimmers went under the water with vessels filled with a flammable or explosive mixture. In 1405, the German writer Kieser described a military diver's costume consisting of a leather jacket, a metal helmet with two glass portholes, and a leather tube connected to an air bag. Unfortunately, this method could not increase the time spent under water for a long time, since the volume of air in the bag was small; when breathing, the content of carbon dioxide in it quickly increased, and oxygen, on the contrary, decreased.

In the XVI-XVIII centuries. Many inventions were made to make it easier for people to penetrate the water element. They can be divided into two groups. First diving suits. For example, the costume proposed by the famous artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci was a one-piece head-to-toe robe of fur or leather, filled with air, boots, sandbags for weight, and a copper armored jacket.

A 16th-century book illustration depicting Alexander the Great diving underwater in a glass bell.

The second group is the so-called diving bells, devices filled with air lowered under water. Leather breathing tubes either connected the diving suits to the bell or were brought to the surface.

The main disadvantage of these devices was that swimmers in heavy suits became clumsy, they had difficulty moving along the bottom, and the ability to move was severely limited by the length of the breathing tubes. The weight of the suit could still be tolerated if a way could be found to make it autonomous. But for this it was necessary either to significantly increase the amount of air that the diver took with him, or to learn how to regenerate the used air.

The air compressor dates back to the mid-17th century. invented by German engineer Otto von Guericke. Using compressed air, it was possible to stay under water much longer, but at that time they did not yet know how to make it breathable. Experiments on the reduction of oxygen by chemical means at the beginning of the 17th century. was conducted by the Dutchman Cornelius van Drebbel, then in 1792 by the Frenchman Dionysus, a member of the Bordeaux Academy, and in 1808 his compatriot Pierre Marie Toubulik presented to the public an “underwater machine,” which he called an “ichthyosaur.” The structure was a bell put on the diver; inside there was a vessel with sea water, from which oxygen was restored through chemical reactions. However, Tubulik’s cumbersome invention attracted little interest and was soon forgotten.

In 1825, Englishman William James invented a device that can be called the grandfather of modern scuba gear. This device had a cylindrical belt that served as a reservoir for compressed air. The invention remained in the drawings, but six years later the American Condert came up with rubberized clothing, the lower part of which reached the armpits, and the upper part covered the diver's head and body up to the hips. “The method of providing air was to compress a sufficient quantity of it in a copper horseshoe-shaped cylinder,” wrote a reporter for the Mechanical Illustrated Magazine. A small faucet allowed air into the suit, preventing water from entering it. The exhaled air came out through a hole the size of a pinhead." After a series of successful dives, the inventor died. During the investigation, it was found that the tube through which air was supplied had failed under water.

A diver's heavy boots that help him overcome the buoyant force of the water.

O. von Guericke.

In 1832, the director of the French rescue company L. d'Augerville tested his diving apparatus while lifting cargo from the sunken English ship Bellona. In his apparatus, compressed air was placed in a red copper dorsal cylinder. D'Augerville's subordinates, equipped These devices coped with the task so successfully that the Minister of the Navy ordered the organization of several diving schools and the creation of special groups of underwater rescuers.

The next notable invention in this field followed three decades later, when in 1863 the American Colin McKean received a patent for an “underwater suit.” The rubber suit was complemented by a back reservoir with compressed air, a supply regulator and a mask. According to the patent application, the suit gave the swimmer the ability to sink to the bottom, move along it and independently rise to the surface. Unfortunately, this scuba prototype appeared at the worst possible moment: there was a civil war in CIIIA, and even interested parties did not pay attention to it.

Three years later, French mining engineer Benoit Roucarol patented a regulator for supplying air from the surface, building on his own invention, which made it possible to breathe compressed air in a heavily polluted mine atmosphere. Later, naval lieutenant Auguste Deneruz adapted it to automatically supply air under water. A steel cylinder filled with compressed air was attached to the submariner’s back. When the pressure increased during a dive, a valve in the regulator membrane automatically opened, and an additional portion of air entered the mask, and upon ascent, its amount was reduced. Thus, the regulator equalized the pressure in the breathing apparatus and the water pressure. This apparatus was connected to the surface with a hose through which air was supplied to the cylinder. However, the diver could disconnect the hose from the cylinder and remain underwater for a short time. It is this device that is described in Jules Verne’s novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

In 1878, Henry Fluse invented the first successful closed-circuit underwater vehicle using pure oxygen. A box filled with caustic potassium, which is a carbon dioxide absorber, was attached to the cylinder. It was not known at that time that pure oxygen inhaled under pressure becomes toxic at depths greater than 20 m and the time of inhalation should be limited. At the beginning of the 20th century. the oxygen supply regulator was improved, in addition, cylinders were manufactured that could withstand gas pressure up to 200 kgcm3. This enabled the self-contained closed-circuit Fluss vehicle to become standard equipment for the British submarine fleet during the First World War.

Illustration for the novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” by J. Verne.

The invention of Yves le Prieur, who in 1933 modified the apparatus of Roucarol and Deneruz, made the diver completely autonomous. In his version, the breathing mixture in the cylinder was under very high pressure. However, this device did not have a gearbox; the diver had to open the valve and inhale from a free flow of air directed in front of the mask. At the same time, the air was consumed too quickly, and in general the device was not very convenient. Therefore, despite the significant risk of barotrauma and the low mobility of the diver, slightly improved closed-circuit devices were used until the end of World War II.

In 1943, French oceanologist Jacques Cousteau, together with engineer Emile Gagnan, developed a device with an open breathing circuit using compressed air, called an aqualung (or Latin aqua “water” and English lung “lung”). In the same year, they founded a company producing autonomous open-circuit light diving equipment under the same name Aqualung. All over the world this name is perceived as a trademark; for other underwater vehicles the term “scuba” is used (English SCUBA Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus “autonomous apparatus for breathing under water”). And only in our country any light diving equipment is called scuba gear.

Diver William Badders prepares for a then-record dive to a depth of 500 feet (152 m). 1938

A diver wearing the Tritonia rigid atmospheric suit, designed for long-term deep-sea diving (center). 1935

Although Cousteau's invention has undergone significant changes over the course of more than six decades, the basic design of the scuba tank has remained the same. The device is a regulator consisting of a gearbox and a pulmonary valve, which is connected to a metal cylinder with compressed air or an air mixture. Getting from the cylinder into the reducer, where the pressure drops to an average level (6-11 atmospheres more than the ambient pressure), the air is transferred through a hose to a pulmonary valve, the mouthpiece of which is inserted into the mouth. There, the pressure is reduced to the level of ambient pressure, which ensures comfortable and safe breathing.

With scuba diving, a person can dive to a depth of up to 300 m (record 330 m) and stay under water, although at a much shallower depth, for up to 30 hours. It is widely used for industrial, rescue and military purposes. Scuba diving, or diving, is currently becoming increasingly popular, which means that the improvement of this device will certainly continue.

Jacques Yves Cousteau. 1968

Breathe... water

Israeli inventor Alon Bodner is developing a fundamentally new type of scuba gear. Instead of a cylinder with a compressed air mixture, he used a device for extracting dissolved air from sea water - a kind of artificial gills. Using a mini-centrifuge, a vacuum is created in a special chamber, and air at low pressure begins to come out of the water.

Cossack Anatoly Lisovoy stated this and, as confirmation, presented a document certified by the seal of a once top-secret organization created on the orders of Felix Dzerzhinsky himself

Established by “Iron Felix,” the Special Purpose Underwater Expedition [EPRON] by the mid-30s carried out all ship-lifting, rescue, diving and, importantly, experimental work on all seas, rivers and lakes of the USSR. There was also a diving technical school at EPRON. This is where our fellow countryman, Pologov resident Alexey Lisovoy, entered in 1932. And after finishing his studies, already as a diver on a secret expedition, he began developing a “device for descending under water to shallow depths.”

“The day of the start of work on scuba gear can be considered January 10, 1936”
“How did your father,” I ask the son of the once secret diver, “got from the Pologo steppes to the shores of the Black Sea?”
- In 1930, his family was dispossessed [my father just turned 15]. They took a spacious house - it is still preserved in the village of Ivan Franko, which is near Pologi; four cows, the garden was requisitioned. And the circumstances had to coincide: Ivan’s grandfather was not at home at the time of dispossession. He went to Crimea for treatment. My grandmother, Maria Samsonovna, remained on the farm. She looked and looked at what was happening and, having learned in the evening that the village committee of the poor had decided to send the Lisov family into exile, she gathered the children at night - my father and his three younger brothers - Nikolai, Grigory and Ivan, and at night she took them to the steppe on a chaise. And, having reached the nearest railway station, they went to Crimea, to their grandfather. Not far from Balaklava - behind the mountain, in the village of Komary, we rented half a house. Grandfather and grandmother worked in the vineyard. Father went to the bakery. I baked bread for Balaklava. Well, when I grew up, I entered the EPRON diving technical school.
- Did he also start working on scuba gear in the Black Sea?
- On the diagram of my father’s “device for launching under water”, which is kept in our family, there is a date: January 10, 1936. It can be conditionally considered the day when work began on the production of EPRON scuba gear. That, my father said, was the name of his underwater device. The tests did not take place on the Black Sea: after graduating from the diving technical school, my father was appointed to the main department of EPRON. But not to Leningrad, but to the city of Lomonosov. From there he went on business trips with his scuba gear - to work related to the recovery of sunken ships. This is what EPRON did in the first place. After all, Dzerzhinsky originally created a special-purpose underwater expedition to raise the English frigate Prince, which sank in the waters of Balaklava in 1854. The Bolsheviks were sure that he had gone to the bottom with a huge cargo of gold on board. No gold was found on the Prince, but the Underwater Expedition remained. And she continued to search for and raise sunken ships. And my father carried out their initial inspection under water. Or intelligence, to put it differently. And subsequently prepared the ships for lifting. It was, as you can imagine, incredibly difficult work! To put it simply, it boiled down to the following: the bottom under the ship had to be pierced with huge needles, to which lifting winch cables would cling. It’s not an hour or two that needs to be spent, but much more. And, don’t forget, the work was done in depth! Sometimes - very significant. Did this affect my father's health? Of course yes.
- In the direction to the Moscow-Oka River Transport Department it is said that “the device proposed by Comrade Lisov needs design changes.” Do you know what they could be connected with?
- My father made a regular tube from the balloon to the pulmonary valve and mouthpiece. To which the commission stated: it will bend under water at the most inopportune moment and cut off the scuba diver’s air. Solving the problem was not difficult - it was enough to make the tube corrugated. So that she doesn't bend over.
- Tell me, Anatoly Alekseevich, did the inventive diver Alexei Lisovoy have security?
- Two soldiers with rifles constantly accompanied him. And he himself always had a revolver with him. But even increased precautions did not save the EPRON scuba gear: in October 1941 it disappeared.

“They paid for the scuba tank as much gold as it weighed”
- How did this happen?
- My father was sent on a business trip from Moscow to the Volga. I don’t remember where exactly. And it doesn’t matter. At some intermediate station it was necessary to make a transfer. The EPRON businessmen got off the train and checked their suitcase with scuba gear into the storage room. And when we returned to pick it up, there was no suitcase! Or rather, they give out another one. Similar, but not the same. For three days my father and the guards were on duty at the station - he thought that by mistake someone had taken something that was not his and would return it after sorting it out. Alas, no one returned anything. Returning to Moscow, my father reported the loss, but did not organize additional searches - you can imagine what was happening in the capital in October 1941. There was no time for scuba gear!
- What did your father say about the disappearance of the suitcase? Did he have any idea who might need it?
- It seems that the suitcase with scuba gear went through Murmansk to England. And those who committed the theft from the station locker asked the customer for as much gold as the suitcase weighed. The father also did not rule out that it was his scuba gear that soon ended up in the possession of Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Having slightly modified the device for diving, in January 1943 he conducted underwater tests and patented scuba gear as his own invention.
- Do you want to say that Cousteau knew about the existence of EPRON scuba gear?
- My father had information that during a pre-war trip to the USSR, Cousteau was interested in new technology. Not only related to scuba diving. Any! He was looking for something... that was nowhere else!
- Maybe he worked for intelligence?
- I didn’t tell you that! But I heard that the French intelligence services considered the world-famous explorer of the deep sea to be their man until the end of his days. By the way, when on July 10, 1985, French underwater saboteurs in the New Zealand port of Auckland mined the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, they were wearing Cousteau scuba gear.

“As soon as my father’s boat approached the ship, it exploded!”
- Did the war take a toll on diver Lisovoy?
- He got it at Stalingrad! Twice he almost died in the waters of the Volga. The first case was related to the fulfillment of a government task to find a barge with a cargo of canned food - it sank somewhere on the approach to the city [well, the front really needed the products]. My father, in diving equipment, carried out an underwater inspection and prepared the barge for lifting, and above, on the boat, two soldiers pumped air into him. Then suddenly a German plane appears - the Nazis had not yet reached Stalingrad at that time, but their aerial reconnaissance aircraft were already patrolling over the Volga. Probably, the pilot realized that a diving boat was working on the river, so on the second approach he fired a burst of machine gun fire at it. Out of fright, the fighters in the bot forgot about everything in the world. About the diver too. And they ran away! To the steppe. Left without air, the father managed to throw away his diving boots - they were heavy! - and emerge. The fishermen brought him ashore, barely alive.
- Have you caught the fugitives?
- Well, yes. And they wanted to immediately put them to use. In EPRON, by the way, there was an unwritten law: if a diver working under water died, then those who supported his life on the surface were shot without trial. But the father of those who escaped and, in fact, betrayed his fighters, took pity on him: “I stayed alive, let them live too.”
As for the second case, it had more tragic consequences for my father. At the beginning of March 1943, a group of EPRON officers was called to a minesweeper whose steering wheel was jammed in the middle of the Volga. Two sailors sat on the oars of the boat, the father sat on the stern and swam. We approached the ship that had stopped moving, and then it exploded! It turns out that the minesweeper's steering wheel was jammed by a magnetic mine. It worked. When he woke up, his father took off his wet overcoat that was restricting his movements and swam to the shore in the icy water. Then there was a hospital, a Kremlin clinic. With difficulty, the doctors got my father back on his feet, but until the end of his life he remained a second group war invalid. In connection with this, when he returned to Zaporozhye, he no longer worked - he took care of the garden. Died on April 18, 1989.
- It turns out he never returned to scuba diving?
- Why didn’t you come back! After the war, I restored a working model of scuba gear from memory. And the original diagram of the “device for launching under water” [dated January 10, 1936] survived. It was made not on paper, but on oilcloth. My father always carried it with him - in his inner pocket. So my father was directly involved in the first serial Soviet scuba gear AVM-1 [naval scuba gear], work on which was carried out in Orekhovo-Zuevo. Although, unfortunately, there is no official confirmation of this. Only my father’s stories are preserved in my memory. Well, after Orekhovo-Zuevo, the production of scuba gear was established in Ukraine - in Voroshilovgrad. And they began to enter the fleet en masse. Including submarines, of course, where scuba gear was used as a means of escape.
Vladimir SHAK
[Newspaper "MIG", Zaporozhye]

Cadet of the diving technical school Alexey Lisovoy, spring 1932

Alexey Lisovoy tests a deep-sea spacesuit, summer 1935, Black Sea

To the point
From the official direction to the Moscow-Oka River Transport Department, issued on December 17, 1936 by the head of the 6th department of the Main Directorate of EPRON:
“I inform you that on December 14, 1936, the commission, in the presence of the diver Comrade Lisov, tested the device proposed by Comrade Lisov, and the test results showed that the device can be used FOR Descent UNDER WATER [emphasis added - author] to shallow depths, but needs a number of design changes listed in the act. Since Comrade Lisovoy intends to continue working on improving the device in order to eliminate
The shortcomings indicated in the act independently, I consider Comrade Lisovoy’s stay in Leningrad unnecessary. For further work, Comrade Lisovoy needs to create appropriate conditions, as well as provide the necessary material.”

History of EPRON
EPRON was created by order of Felix Dzerzhinsky No. 528 of December 17, 1923 in Balaklava. On January 10, 1931, it was transferred to the authority of the People's Commissariat of Railways, and on February 23 - to the authority of the People's Commissariat of Water Transport.
Since 1942, EPRON has been called the Emergency Rescue Service of the USSR Navy. And the diving courses that existed under EPRON were reorganized into a naval diving technical school in 1930 [the deputy head there was Konstantin Pavlovsky, the first Soviet diving doctor].

Underwater breathing apparatus
The first to patent an underwater breathing apparatus were French engineer Benoit Rouqueirol and naval lieutenant Auguste Deneyrouz in 1865. Its disadvantage: the device was connected to the surface with a hose through which low-pressure air was supplied to the cylinder. Nevertheless, it was Rouqueirol and Deneiruz who were issued a patent [No. 63606] for scuba gear - “water lung” [Latin “aqua” - water, English “lang” - lung].
In 1926, naval officer Yvle Prijor used scuba gear with a continuous supply of air under pressure from a Michelin cylinder - at that time it was used to quickly inflate car tires, and declared himself the first light diver. Despite the fact that Prieur's scuba tank allowed a person to stay under water for only ten minutes at a depth of 12 meters, his model remained in service with the French fleet until 1933.
Only naval officer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and engineer Emile Gagnan improved scuba gear in the early 40s, giving it a well-known look. On January 8, 1943, the device was tested in one of the rivers near Paris. After modification, Cousteau's scuba tank was patented and became a commercial product in 1946.
In the USSR, the first domestic scuba gear AVM-1 “Podvodnik-1” was launched into serial production in 1957 [development of the Orekhovo-Zuevsky Design Bureau of oxygen equipment. Project managers Alexander Soldatenkov and Yuri Kitaev]. Somewhat later, a second scuba tank appeared, called “Ukraine” [developed by the Voroshilovgrad plant of mining and rescue equipment; Project Manager Alexander Gnamm].

Inventor: Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan
A country: France
Time of invention: 1943

The modern scuba gear that we know and love is just a so-called open-circuit apparatus. That is, this is when inhalation is made from a scuba tank, and exhalation is released into the water. And in the development of this device, first of all, we must thank the French.

The first attempts to develop an autonomous “open-cycle apparatus” were made by two Frenchmen. These are mining engineer Benoit Rouqueirol and French navy lieutenant Auguste Deneyrouz. In the mid-nineteenth century, they developed a design for an apparatus that contained a membrane mechanism to reduce pressure depending on depth. It is curious that Rouqueirol and Deneiruz did not know each other at that time. Rouqueirol actually tried to make an autonomous breathing apparatus when descending into a mine during rescue operations.

Auguste Deneyrouz, having learned about this development, proposed using it to lower people under water. Thus, a prototype of a modern scuba gear was created. The device was patented and subsequently it was he who was described by Jules Verne in his great novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”.

Despite this, in reality this device had a lot of shortcomings. The most important of them was due to the fact that the cylinders of that time were able to withstand only pressure up to 30 - 40 atmospheres and to increase the time a person spent under water it was necessary to supply air from the surface. Thus, there has not yet been talk of any special autonomy for a long time.

The fact is that this new product allowed a person to be under water for only a few minutes. Then the submariner connected his air tank to a pump standing on the surface. But, nevertheless, it was a breakthrough, and people got the opportunity, albeit for a short time, but still, the opportunity to autonomously stay under water. This was already a kind of “sip of freedom from hoses.”

The Rouqueirol-Deneyrouz devices were subsequently used for more than sixty years, but due to a number of shortcomings, they were competed by “closed cycle” devices - rebreathers. This is when the exhaled air remains in the system and is enriched with oxygen for a new breath. But more on that later.

But, nevertheless, people continued to try to improve this “open cycle” and already in 1936, French army officer Yves Le Prieur developed a device with a constant supply of air under pressure from an inflation cylinder, which could withstand pressure up to 150 atmospheres. An interesting feature of this equipment configuration was that, along with the autonomous apparatus itself, a special mask was also used, which was filled with air from a cylinder, thus pushing out water. This time, Priora’s apparatus was completely autonomous, since it finally freed the person from the hoses.

But this device was far from perfect, since the valve for inhalation was opened only manually, and exhalation was made into a mask and only through the nose.

At the same time, autonomous human swimming underwater was already possible thanks to the so-called “closed cycle” devices. The system of this apparatus was developed back in 1787 by a young British sailor, entrepreneur, naturalist and inventor Henry Fluss. On the diver’s face there was a mask connected to a breathing bag behind his back, connected in turn to a copper cylinder, which was filled with oxygen and a box of caustic potassium.

The person inhaled not with air, but with oxygen. When exhaling (a mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide), the exhaled mixture was not released into the water, but remained in the system. Carbon dioxide was absorbed by caustic potassium and the person took a new breath of oxygen. The person replaced the consumed oxygen with a reserve from the cylinder, the addition of which he regulated using a special valve located on the cylinder.

This device could not be used underwater at significant depths, since at depth oxygen is terribly toxic and that is why this system could only be used to rescue people in coal mines or tunnels. Everything was so until the moment when this system was modernized by the Englishman Robert Davis. Already in 1911, a device called “Davis False Lung” was released and which later went on sale under the name “Proto”.

By the way, this same, albeit slightly modified, Fluss-Davis apparatus was used in 1925 during the filming of the first underwater film, based on Jules Verne’s novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

The new rebreather had a pressure reducing valve and thus admitted oxygen automatically and at the required pressure, while working on the principle of the Rouqueirol-Deneuruz regulator, and the copper cylinder was replaced with a steel one that could withstand greater pressure.

With the outbreak of the First World War, these devices were used in fires, and mainly, of course, on the battlefield to protect soldiers during gas attacks, so often used in this first world massacre. And only after Davis adapted this system to get out of the industry, the governments of the countries became interested in these products, which were used in the future, even despite the danger of oxygen poisoning. Subsequently, this device became widely known under the name “PSAD” - Davis Underwater Rescue Apparatus.

But the time has come, and the idea of ​​an open-circuit apparatus has had its say in autonomous scuba diving.

Here is how it was. The young French officer Jacques Cousteau, by a lucky chance, married the daughter of a tycoon from the owners of the largest French household gas corporation, Air Liquide. In 1942, when France was occupied by Germany, all the oil was methodically taken for the military needs of the Reich. The Vichy regime collaborated with Germany and pleased it in everything.

Nevertheless, the French did not want to limit themselves in the ability to move on and within the walls of the design bureau of the Air Liquid design bureau, a system for supplying gas to the engine was developed. This system was developed by in-house engineer Emil Ganyan. It was to him that Cousteau suggested remaking this system for breathing under water. Thus, a two-stage pressure reduction system was created, later called scuba gear.

The main difference between scuba gear and previous developments was that the respiratory system automatically supplied the person with air at ambient pressure. That is, a person at any depth received air with the pressure he needed. This provided unimaginable comfort at that time and the possibility of not only complete autonomy under water, but also the possibility of a long voyage.

The name “Aqualung” itself was formed as a result of combining words from two languages ​​- the Latin “aqua” (water) and the English “lung” (lung).

The apparatus was then tested by Gagnan on the Marne River in January 1943 and then, after some modification, again in one of the Parisian swimming pools. In July 1943, Cousteau continued testing scuba gear at sea near Marseille.

Thus, exactly what today is commonly called scuba gear appeared.

The first regulator was released in 1945 and was called CG45 (Cousteau-Gagnan 45).

The patent for the word “scuba” itself belonged to the Air Liquid corporation until 1960-63.

But the word “scuba” gained real fame only when it appeared in 1953 in the book “The World of Silence” by Jacques Yves Cousteau.

Air Liquid subsequently created a global empire for the production of diving equipment and included such giants as Technisub, US Divers, SeaQuest, and Apeks. Subsequently, the company “La Spirotechnique” began to bear the name “Aqualung” and Jacques Cousteau became a member of the board.

So the word “scuba” today is a trademark and a company producing equipment, and that is why, in order to avoid confusion abroad, the open-circuit apparatus is usually called “scuba”. (SCUBA - Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus - autonomous underwater breathing apparatus).

This is how scuba gear was created, and even if abroad this technique is quite rightly called scuba, for us it is still scuba gear, since we are so used to it and cannot be changed.

The invention of scuba gear during the Second World War and its use as military equipment for a long time determined the attitude towards scuba diving as a sport for the elite, firmly taking its place among the prestigious and dangerous “male” entertainments such as diving, crocodile hunting or Camel racing. Trophy."

After the war, numerous national diving federations began to emerge, each attempting to develop its own training program. However, as a rule, they were all aimed at athletes and military divers. In our country, an analogue of such an organization was DOSAAF, where young people were taught to scuba dive with a view to future service in the navy.

The answer to the question about the inventor of scuba gear seems obvious at first glance. Many people watched films about Cousteau as children and know that he is the father of this invention. But is it?

Prerequisites for creating “water lungs”

Since ancient times, people have tried to increase the depth of immersion and the time spent under water. Unfortunately, the human body has gone too far in its development from the inhabitants of the water element. Insignificant minutes and several tens of meters of water thickness are all that is available to a person, and only if he is sufficiently trained.
But the depths of the oceans beckon with their mysteries. Therefore, many ancient inventors thought about this problem. There have been attempts to immerse in water using special containers connected to a pump. At the end of the 18th century, a diving suit similar to the modern one was invented. But all this was not the same: in all these devices the diver was still connected to the ship.

Swimmer's autonomy is the goal of inventors

The great Leonardo did not remain aloof from this problem. He was engaged in developments for the water element in two directions: ensuring breathing under water and devices for accelerating movement. The first was ensured by modernizing the structure of leather shoulder bags, which contained air inside; the second - by creating something similar to modern flippers, but not for the legs, but for the arms.

The structure of the scuba tank itself is an open type system - the diver inhales air from the tank and exhales directly into the water. The basis of such an open-cycle apparatus is the membrane mechanism. Its development belongs to two people at the same time. Benoit Rouqueirol was a mining engineer and, trying to make the work of rescuers in mines easier, in 1866 he developed a mechanism that, using a membrane, lowered the pressure depending on the depth. Lieutenant Auguste Deneyrouz served in the navy and, having learned about Rouqueirol's development, proposed using it for divers. It was this apparatus that Jules Verne described in the novel “20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” Unfortunately, the device designed by Deneyrouz-Rouqueirol allowed one to remain under water for too little time - only a few minutes - and therefore was not widely used.

The emergence of modern scuba gear

In the twentieth century, the navy still continued to use bulky diving equipment. Therefore, French naval officer Yves-Paul Le Prieur continued the research of his compatriots and in 1924 designed a breathing apparatus with a high-strength cylinder. In this invention, the swimmer himself had to regulate the flow of air.

Independently of the French, in 1939 the American Christian James Lambertsen invented a diving system, which was given the code name "SCUBA" (Self-Contained Underwater Oxygen Breathing Apparatus - an independent underwater oxygen breathing apparatus). The use of this device was limited to shallow water, as there was a high risk of oxygen poisoning. However, the device was successfully used by US military divers during World War II.

During the war years in France they also remembered Le Prieur's invention, and in 1943 Georges Comeintes created the Amphibian diving system based on it. It consisted of two air cylinders connected together. The Comeintes system was adopted by the French Navy.

Here we already remember Cousteau. During World War II, he served in the French navy and was a diving fan. A happy coincidence and the impetus for the invention of scuba gear was the marriage of Jacques-Yves Cousteau to Simone Melchior. Simone's father, a very rich man, provided Jacques-Yves with funds for research work, and also introduced him to the engineer Emile Gagnan. The Cousteau-Gagnan tandem gave birth to scuba diving in its modern form in 1943. The main difference from its predecessors was the valve, which supplied the swimmer with air under pressure equal to the ambient pressure, which made it possible to sharply increase the duration of the dive.

The word “scuba” is currently a patented name for the “Aqua Lung” brand, so in many countries the word “scuba” (SCUBA) is more often used, but we still call this device scuba.

Scuba
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First surface air regulator was patented in 1866 by Benoit Rouqueirol, a French mining engineer who in 1860 invented a compressed air leakage regulator for use in air-filled mines.

This device consisted of a container with compressed air and a hose. Later, Auguste Deneyrouz adapted it to automatically supply air underwater. The regulator worked on the principle of dry and wet chambers, membrane and valve. The system was driven by inhalation (low pressure) and exhalation (increased pressure). The regulator was capable of making the pressure in the breathing apparatus equal to the ambient pressure. The inventors were issued patent N 63606 for the device. It was this apparatus that Jules Verne described in the novel “

Scuba gear is a common device for scuba diving enthusiasts today. But have you ever thought about who invented it and how? Today I propose to find out the history of this invention, and at the same time find out how people swam underwater before this miracle of engineering was invented.

Of course, humanity has always strived to learn to walk underwater as freely as on land. But in fact, the first serious attempts to invent something that could provide breathing under water began several centuries ago. Several systems were developed and tested at once: diving bells; sealed suits with hoses for supplying air from the surface; finally, the breathing apparatus itself.

Air bell

Air bells were essentially a barrel turned upside down, under which air was stored and the diver could periodically swim under it to breathe a little. This design, of course, is very difficult to call a diving suit, but at least such a device already slightly extended the autonomous stay under water.

By the way, there were also attempts to organize small bells that were worn on the head. But alas, as soon as you tilted your head a little, water began to flow under them. So this design turned out to be even more inconvenient than the “big brother”.

There was another, more “perverted” option, when a large bell sank to the bottom, then the assistant put another, small bell on his head, and could walk a little along the bottom - as far as the tube allowed him, through which he breathed the air remaining in the large bell. After this, barrels with additional air were dropped from above, which were weighted with cargo. The assistant dragged them to the bell and it was filled with a fresh supply of oxygen.

Breathing apparatus

But still, we can only begin to talk about at least some kind of autonomy under water with the development of the French mining engineer Benoit Rouqueirol and his compressed air leakage regulator. He thought of using his device for rescue work in mines with polluted air. But French navy lieutenant Auguste Deneyrouz suggested using it to lower people underwater. The device was patented, and later Jules Verne described it in the novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

Despite this, in reality this device had a lot of shortcomings. The most important of them was due to the fact that the cylinders of that time were not able to withstand high pressure. Those. this novelty allowed a person to stay under water for only a few minutes. The submariner then connected his air tank to a pump standing on the surface or was forced to rise to the surface. But, nevertheless, it was a breakthrough, and people got the opportunity, albeit for a short time, but still, to autonomously stay under water. This was already a kind of “sip of freedom from hoses.”

At the same time, the development of a closed-type system was underway, in which the already used gas is again sent into cylinders. Such a device was developed by the Englishman Henry Fluss in 1877. Interestingly, he also created his own breathing system for mine rescue work.

The system consisted of a breathing bag, a copper oxygen cylinder and a box of caustic soda. The submariner breathed oxygen, and the exhaled mixture was neutralized in the system and supplemented with a fresh portion of oxygen. But it was not yet known that at great depths oxygen becomes toxic.

During World War II, at the French company for the production of household and technical gas Air Liquide, engineer Emile Gagnan developed a system for supplying gas to a car engine so that the car would be refueled not with gasoline (the consumption of which was limited in wartime), but with gas.

Officer Jacques Cousteau suggested that he convert this system for breathing underwater. The comrades developed a two-stage regulator that lowered the air pressure from the cylinder to ambient pressure.

Thus, in 1943, the first modern scuba gear appeared: autonomous and with a long operating time. The word Aqualung itself (from the Latin aqua - “water” and English lung - “lung”) began to be called a regulator for a breathing apparatus.