Beginnings of Diving
From the beginnings of boat travel on the seas, people began losing items overboard and wanted them back. Harvesting food from the sea began thousands of years ago. So it is assumed that as far back as 3,000 years BC people jumped in over their heads to retrieve food and lost objects.
Many early attempts were made to provide an air supply for divers so they could stay down longer, but it wasn’t until around 1830, when the air compressor was invented, that a continuous source of surface air could be pumped down through a hose to a diver, making extended explorations below the surface possible. Around 1940 Jacques Cousteau began a quest to discover the wonders of the sea near his home in France. He, too, started as a free diver with a desire to extend his time underwater. Jacques went to a friend in Paris, Emil Gagnon, who had experience with gases under pressure, and together they invented the first successful underwater breathing apparatus not connected to a surface air supply, the “Aqualung.” They first took it into the Mediterranean Sea in 1943, the beginning of a lifetime of discovery for the Cousteau family and many others from around the world. From this beginning, a new industry was formed including many training agencies, manufactures, dive resorts, local dive stores, and much more. I can’t imagine the world without scuba.
Scuba in the United States started with a few adventurous individuals trying out home-built gadgets, but when Jacques Cousteau formed the U.S. Divers Company around 1950 in California, the company and scuba really took hold. As the equipment became available, there were many attempts to learn the techniques required to dive safely. A group from Los Angeles County in California is credited with early diving instruction.
During the year 1959, YMCA of the USA created the first country-wide scuba certification program in the USA. That year, Bernard Empleton took on the task of solving the growing need for scuba education by hosting an instructor course that graduated 23 new instructors from around the country. From that meager beginning, scuba in the United States began to grow. Other groups began to form agencies to fill the need including NAUI, PADI, NASDS, PDIC, and others. YMCA continued its presence for nearly 50 years until 2008 when a decision was made to put resources in another direction. Scuba Educators International was born out of the YScuba Program.
Backing up a few years, in the late 1800s the “hard hat” divers with air pumped down from the surface, began staying longer at depth and upon surfacing suffered from a condition later known as decompression sickness (commonly known as the bends.) In 1907, a French scientist J.F. Haldane, discovered the physical reason this was occurring and presented evidence that led to what we know as the dive tables today. It wasn’t until 1954 that the U.S. Navy formatted the first dive tables for Navy “frogmen” which eventually led to variations of those tables that we use today to reduce the risk of decompression sickness. You will discover how these dive tables apply to your diving by limiting your time at a depth and the rate at which you ascend to the surface.
Today dive computers are common and required in some areas. Dive computers more accurately calculate dive time and exposure at depth. In the case of an air integrated computer dive time remaining based on the air in your tank. To understand and respect the dive computer a firm knowledge of why and how the dive computer works is desired. Like any tool computers can fail. Having a backup computer or a backup method of tracking exposure to nitrogen and oxygen are desired.
Divers should understand how pressure acts on the body and the gasses we breathe. Divers should have a strong understanding of how dive computers calculate exposure limits using dive algorithms (Dive Tables). The ultimate reason for the knowledge to make informed decisions and safety while diving.