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Jan 1, 1551
A diving machine invented by Nicholas Tartaglia.
It was a suit with a big wooden frame that looks like a gigantic hour glass. A rope was attached to the heavy weight of the suit. -
Period: Jan 1, 1551 to
The time from the beginning of the advancments of deep sea diving to the last time it was advanced.
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The German Inventor Kessker introduced his diving bell.
It had glass ports and a ballast weight of stability, but could have proven hazardous. Many historians observed that if the diver took one false step, the suit would capsize and drown its occupant. -
The First air pump is created.
The first effective air pump is created by Von Guericke. With such a pump, Robert Boyle is able to undertake the compression and decompression of animals. -
Test on a viper by Rober Boyle.
Robert Boyle observed Gas bubbles in a vipers eye that has been compressed and decompressed. This was the first record of decompression sickness in the history of scuba diving. -
Edmund Halley designed and built a diving bell.
The bell, made of wood, a bell in the form of a truncated cone. The largest end(which was on the bottom) is open while the smallest is closed. The air was replenished by two barrels. Each containing Thirty-six Gallons. -
Englishman John Lethbridge builds a "Diving Engine."
The Diving engine is an underwater Oak Cylinder that is surface-supplied with compressed air. Inside this device a diver can stay submerged for 30 minutes at 60 feet, while protruding his arms into the water for salvage work. Water is kept out of the suit by means of greased leather cuffs, which seal around the operator's arms. -
A Frenchman, Sieur Freminet, Invented a rebreathing device.
The Device Recycled the exhaled air from inside the barrel. This was the first self-contained air device. He died after twenty min. of using his own device. One of the many adventurers in the history of scuba diving who died for his efforts. -
The British John Smeaton created the first modern diving bell.
For the first time, he used a force pump and a tube arrangment. The bell had a force pump mounted on the roof, meaning that it could be totally submerged. -
James Rennie design a diving bell.
He designed and built the diving bell for use in Ramsgate Harbour. It was rectangular in a manner similar to Smeaton's, was made of cast iron, again with a force pump at the surface, operated by four men; but unlike Smeaton's bell, the force pump was topside and not on the roof of the bell. It weight about 4,200 pounds. -
English inventor, Charles Anthony Deane, patents a "Smoke Helmet" for Fighting Fires.
At some point over the next few years, the helment is used as a diving helmet as well. The helment fits over a mans head and is held on with weights. Air is supplied from the surface with a hose. -
Enlgish inventor, William James, creates the "First workable, full-time SCUBA."
It incorporated a cylindrical bet around the divers waist that serves as an air reservoir, at 450 psi. -
German-born inventor Augustus Siebe seals the Deanes brothers diving helmet.
Augustus Siebe sealed the diving helment to a watertight, air-containing rubber suit. The closed diving suit, connected to an air pump on the surface, becomes the first effective standard diving dress in scuba diving history, and the prototype of hard-hat rigs still in use today. -
Ernst Bazin was the first person to use electric lighting and deep sea diving and first to make un unverwater observatory.
Bazin's observatory and lighting system was in use in 1872 during an expedition to salvage Spanish Galleons in Vigo Bay. -
Frenchmen Benoit Rouquayrol and Auguste Denayrouse, patent an apparatus for deep sea diving.
It consists of a horizontal steel tank of compressed air (about 250-350 psi) on a diver's back, connected through a valve arrangement to a mouth-piece. Patented as the "Aerophore," the device delivers air only when the diver inhales, via a membrane that is sensitive to outside water pressure: in effect, the first demand regulator for underwater use in the history of scuba diving. With this apparatus the diver is tethered to the surface by a hose that pumps fresh air into the low pressure tank, b -
English merchant seaman, Henry A. Fleuss, develops the first workable, self-contained diving rig that uses compressed oxygen (rather than compressed air).
In this prototype of closed circuit scuba, carbon dioxide is absorbed by rope soaked in caustic potash, so that exhaled air can be re-breathed. Although depths are limited (pure oxygen is toxic below about 25 feet of sea water, a fact not known at the time), the apparatus allows for relatively long bottom times, up to three hours. In 1880 Fleuss's apparatus is used by the famous English diver Alexander Lambert to enter a flooded tunnel and seal a hatchway door; the hatchway is 60 feet down and 1 -
The U.S. Bureau of Construction & Repair first introduces the Mark V Diving Helmet.
When attached to a deep sea dress and umbilical, the Mark V becomes the underwater work horse for deep sea diving for decades to come. This is a major milestone in the history of scuba. -
Research is begun in United States into the use of helium-oxygen mixtures for deep sea diving.
To the beginning of World War II, the U.S. maintains a monopoly on helium. Another connection with the military in the history of scuba. -
First helium-oxygen experimental dives are conducted by U.S. Navy and Bureau of Mines.
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French navy captain Yves Le Prieur modifies the Rouquayrol-Denayrouse invention
He created a breathing apparatus that was combined with a specially designed demand valve with a high pressure air tank (1500 psi) to give the diver complete freedom from restricting hoses and lines. The apparatus contains no regulator; the diver receives a breath of fresh air by opening a tap, while exhaled air escapes into the water under the edge of the diver's mask. -
Owen Churchill's swim fins.
This was the first year of production of Owen Churchill's swim fins. Initially, only 946 pairs are sold, but in later years production increases substantially, and tens of thousands are sold to the Allied forces. -
Jacques-Yves Cousteau (a French naval lieutenant) enters the history of scuba with Emile Gagnan (an engineer for Air Liquide, a Parisian natural gas company) .
They worked together to redesign a car regulator that will automatically provide compressed air to a diver on his slightest intake of breath. -
Creation of Bathyscaphe.
Famed Swiss balloonist August Piccard turns his attention to deep sea diving. With son Jacques, he pioneers a new type of vessel called the bathyscaphe (deep boat). The bathyscaphe is completely self-contained (not tethered to the surface), and designed to go deeper than any bathysphere. On February 15, 1954, off the coast of French West Africa, a bathyscaphe containing Georges S. Houot and Pierre-Henri Willm exceeds Barton's 1948 deep sea diving record, reaching a depth of 13,287 feet. -
Divers Alert Network
Is a non-profit organization to promote safe scuba diving and is located at Duke University. -
The first commercially dive computer, The Orca Edge, is introduced to diving.
In the next decade many manufacturers market dive computers, and they become common equipment among recreational divers. -
The wreck of the Titanic is found.
U.S.-French team headed by Woods Hole researcher Robert Ballard, using a remote controlled camera attached to the mother ship, finds the wreck of the Titanic. The ship sits broken into two sections at 12,500 feet depth, some 400 miles northeast of New York. Since 1985 both the U.S. and France have revisited the site, and the French have recovered artifacts from the ship. -
More Advanments of Diving in Different forms.
An estimated 500,000 new scuba divers are certified yearly in the U.S., new scuba magazines form, dive computers proliferate, new liveaboards ply the waters and scuba travel is transformed into a big business. In North America alone recreational diving becomes a multi-billion dollar industry. At the same time there is expansion of "technical diving", diving by non-professionals who use advanced technology, including mixed gases, full face masks, underwater voice communication,propulsion systems.
