How Was Scuba Diving Born? Who Was Jacques Cousteau?

How did people dive before scuba?

Before the Aqua-Lung, underwater work meant being tied to the surface by an umbilical. The milestones:

- 1691 — The diving bell: Edmond Halley's bell, refreshed with barrels of air, was the first practical way to work underwater for extended periods. - 1837 — The closed diving dress: Augustus Siebe's surface-supplied suit with a metal helmet became the standard for a century; the gear used by the sponge divers of Bodrum was a descendant of it. - 1864 — The Rouquayrol-Denayrouze regulator: The first mechanism to deliver air on demand. Jules Verne equipped his divers with it in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas" (1870); but the tanks of the era could not hold enough pressure, so the system remained surface-dependent. - 1878 — The first rebreather: Henry Fleuss's pure-oxygen closed-circuit apparatus served in tunnel work and submarine rescue; oxygen's toxicity at depth confined it to shallow water. - 1926–1933 — Le Prieur: French naval officer Yves Le Prieur experimented with free diving on a back-mounted tank of compressed air; but his free-flow design emptied the tank in minutes.

The one missing piece was a device that delivered air only when the diver inhaled — and at the pressure of the depth they were at.

How was the Aqua-Lung invented?

The Aqua-Lung was born in occupied France in 1943. Naval officer Jacques-Yves Cousteau was introduced to Émile Gagnan, an engineer at Air Liquide, where his father-in-law worked. Gagnan had developed a gas regulator for wartime cars converted to run on gas instead of petrol. The two adapted that regulator to a compressed-air tank: the new demand valve delivered air the instant the diver inhaled, at a pressure equal to the surroundings.

Cousteau ran the first trials off the French coast in the summer of 1943, logging hundreds of dives that year with his friends Frédéric Dumas and Philippe Tailliez. The device went on sale in 1946 as the "Aqua-Lung," and at a stroke diving stopped being an engineering project and became a skill anyone could learn. The acronym "SCUBA" came later, coined in 1952 by American physician Christian Lambertsen: self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.

Who was Jacques Cousteau?

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) was the co-inventor of the Aqua-Lung, an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, and the French naval officer who introduced the underwater world to the masses. His life in brief:

- 1910: Born in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France. He graduated from the naval academy; a severe car accident in 1936 ended his aviation career, and the sea swims he took to strengthen his arms bound him to the underwater world. - 1943: Developed the Aqua-Lung with Émile Gagnan. - 1950: Converted a former minesweeper into the research vessel Calypso and spent the next four decades documenting the world's seas from her deck. - 1953–1956: His book "The Silent World" became an international bestseller; the 1956 film of the same name won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and then an Academy Award — a feat no documentary would repeat for decades. - 1959: Became founding president of CMAS, the World Underwater Federation. The star-rating certification system used in many countries — including Turkey's TSSF / CMAS diver grades — traces back to this organization. - 1962–1965: His Conshelf experiments proved humans could live in underwater stations for days at a time. - 1973: Founded the Cousteau Society, devoting the final chapter of his career to ocean advocacy. - 1997: Died in Paris on 25 June. His red-capped silhouette remains the universal icon of diving.

Cousteau's legacy is twofold: on the technical side, the demand-valve logic inside every modern regulator is his; on the cultural side, his idea that "people protect what they love" is the starting point of the modern marine conservation movement.

How did recreational diving evolve after Cousteau?

Once the Aqua-Lung was commercialized, the problem stopped being the device and became training — and the institutions of recreational diving grew out of that need:

- 1959 - CMAS founded (founding president: Cousteau) — the international star system - 1960 - NAUI founded (USA) - 1966 - PADI founded — today the world's largest training agency - 1970 - SSI founded - 1983 - The first commercial dive computer (Orca Edge) goes on sale - 1990s - Nitrox (enriched air) goes mainstream in recreational diving

Turkey joined this history through the CMAS channel: the Turkish Underwater Sports Federation (TSSF) is a CMAS member, and diver training follows the star system. Turkey's own diving history — from sponge divers to the world's oldest known shipwreck — deserves an article of its own.

At one end of diving history sits Halley's bell; at the other, the dive computer on your wrist. The bridge between them is that small valve two Frenchmen assembled in a workshop in 1943.

*Source notes: development of the Aqua-Lung and the 1943 trials (J.-Y. Cousteau, "The Silent World", 1953); the SCUBA acronym (C. Lambertsen, 1952); founding of CMAS and its first presidency (official CMAS history, 1959); Palme d'Or and Academy Award (Cannes 1956, Academy Awards 1957); agency founding years (official NAUI, PADI, SSI sources).*