WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Diving Technology 0:00:02.440 --> 0:00:06.120 Happy Saturday. When we talked about divers going to the 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:08.920 wreck of the Empress of Ireland in nineteen fourteen, I 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:14.000 found myself idly wondering exactly what the diving technology was 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:15.800 like that they were using at the time, and we 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:20.040 have a whole episode on that subject, not the specifics 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:23.080 of the dive to the Empress of Ireland or exactly 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:25.480 what they would have been using, but on the development 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:29.080 of diving technology, from the earliest diving bells up to 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:31.400 self contained breathing systems. 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:35.600 This originally came out on December second, twenty fifteen. Enjoy 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:41.600 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:49.080 of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:50.880 I'm Holly from It's Tracy B. 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:55.640 Wilson in the No Surprise department. The relationship that humans 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:58.480 have had with bodies of water throughout history has pretty 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:01.080 much always been one of fascination, and it seems like 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:03.360 we have always been trying to find ways to transcend 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:05.800 the limits of our pesky air breathing lungs so that 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:09.119 we can get some time underwater. You have surely heard 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:12.520 innumerable times that approximately seventy percent of the Earth's surfaces 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:15.280 water so it makes sense that curious humans would be 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:18.560 yearning to scope out the situation in the deep, and 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:21.839 while humans were diving on their own for centuries before 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:25.520 they started building assistance apparatus to do so. Today we're 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:27.880 going to talk a little bit just about the history 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:31.360 of the technology, specifically that's evolved over the centuries to 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:34.800 give us some FaceTime with the fish without suffocating. We're 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:37.840 going to cover inventions designed specifically to enable humans to 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:41.360 breathe underwater. While there are plenty of other advancements to 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:44.759 diving like fins and wetsuits, etc. We're pretty much focusing 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:47.360 on the air here and like things that have enabled 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:49.800 us to breathe. And as a heads up going into 0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:55.320 this one in case you are a real dive historian, 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:57.080 I want to be clear that this is by no 0:01:57.160 --> 0:01:59.440 means an exhaustive history on the matter. If you go 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:04.520 to any like even diving fan site and see their 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:08.160 discussion of dive history, there is usually a list roughly 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:12.880 one kilometer long of like various advancements that have been 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.000 made through the years, and so we can't really cover 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:16.839 all of those without just reading a long list, which 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:22.200 would be boring because it has developed incrementally over centuries, 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:24.679 and it includes the work of just multitudes, So there's 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:26.760 no way to include every single step in the course 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:29.560 of one of our podcasts, so we're hitting as many 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:31.720 of the key historical moments as possible. 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:36.560 The first recorded account of some kind of diving technology 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.440 that was designed to let humans breathe underwater was mentioned 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:42.600 by Aristotle in the fourth century BCE in his Book 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:46.800 of Problems. I love that name. This was a diving bell, 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:50.880 and Aristotle described diving bells by saying, quote, they enable 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:54.560 the divers to respire equally well by letting down a 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:57.639 cauldron where this does not fill with water but retains 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.760 the air where it is forced straight down into the water. 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:04.040 You're having trouble visualizing that. It's like when you're a 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:06.680 kid and you're putting the cup down in the sink, 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:09.520 but in a way that's a vacuum, so that you 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.040 don't or it's not a value, doesn't let the water in, 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:15.160 you know what I'm trying to say. So as a note, 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:18.720 there is some debate about whether Aristotle actually wrote the 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:23.440 Book of Problems, So take that with a grain of salt. Yeah, 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:27.400 that's one of those many historical documents that people some 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:30.400 people anyways, believe actually was written by someone later and 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:34.200 then attributed to Aristotle. So also in the late fourth 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:38.640 century BCE, Macedonian king Alexander the Great is on record 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:41.280 as having employed a diving bell to explore the seas 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:43.960 that was beginning as early as age eleven, according to 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:47.280 this sort of legend, So during the Battle of tyr 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:49.320 he has said to have used a diving bell to 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.120 supervise the work of divers that were under his command 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:55.960 and were tasked with removing obstacles that would prevent passage 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:59.600 into port. And once again there is some debate about 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:00.960 the truth of that account. 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:04.080 But there are, if you are a lover of visual mediums, 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:08.600 some truly spectacular renderings of Alexander the Great submerged in 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:11.960 the glass bell and observing the world from his underwater vantage. 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:14.200 Some of them almost look creepy. There's one that I 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:17.359 ran across where it looks like he is kind of 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:21.280 creeping on some lovers in a boat on the surface 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:26.240 of the water. And there are others that just sort 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:29.120 of look like him merrily sitting in his diving bell, 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:31.560 kind of enjoying his view of the world from there. 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:33.400 I'll see if I can find some pictures of this 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:37.000 to put in our show notes. A most basic and 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:39.720 classic example of a diving bell is narrow at the 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.440 top and open at the bottom, so bell shaped like 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.800 its name describes. As you push the bell straight down 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:48.240 into the water, the air is trapped inside of it, 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:50.840 so there's basically a bubble inside there in which a 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:54.960 human can breathe. That's fine for a limited time before 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:57.919 the oxygen is basically used up, and then you have 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:01.440 to come back to the surface. And in order for 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:04.599 a diving bell to counteract the buoyancy created by that 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:07.440 air pocket that enables breathing, it also has to be 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:11.200 quite heavy, so an open bottom diving bell also can't 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:15.000 go very deep into water. There's a Peruvian vase dating 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:16.919 back to around the year two hundred that depicts a 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:20.200 human figure and on huge that figure's face is painted 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:25.040 something that's been interpreted to signify goggles. The goggle interpretation 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:28.040 was arrived at due to the fact that this figure 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:30.120 is also holding fish in. 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:35.080 Each of his hands. Yeah, so it's a pretty cute 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:39.080 little vase. So then the next one of the next 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:41.960 sort of major steps of where we see some sort 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:46.279 of diving event happening in history is around fifteen hundred, 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:49.240 Leonardo da Vinci was sketching out ideas for what appeared 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:53.080 to be diving apparatus, but it seems that he never 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:54.600 actually built one. 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:58.800 Despite accounts going centuries back in the historical record, it 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:02.440 wasn't until the sixth teenth century that a successful diving 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:07.640 bell submersion was conclusively documented. In the fifteen thirties, Italy's 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:11.120 Lake Nemi was explored in a diving bell designed by 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:15.120 Gullielmo de Lorrena as part of an operation to salvage 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.599 barges that dated back to the time of Caligula. 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:21.919 And in a write up in Scientific American that was 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:24.520 done in nineteen oh nine, there was an account of 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:28.200 this fifteen thirty five Lake Nemi dive, and it describes 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:32.080 the apparatus in the following way. Master Guriamo de Lorena 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:35.080 made a contrivance by which he entered the water and 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:37.719 made himself descend to the bottom of the lake, and 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:40.680 there he remained an hour more or less just as 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:43.880 he wished, until the cold drove him up again. With 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:47.640 this contrivance of his one can work sawing cutting corking 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:52.160 up tying ropes. One can also operate with hammers, chisels, pinchers, 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:55.039 and other such tools, though one can use but little 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.159 force because of the hindrance of the water. 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:00.159 So apparently this version of a diving bell left the 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:02.599 wearer with a lot of range of motion, so it 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:06.200 suggested that it was smaller a personal sized diving bell, 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:10.720 rather than one that could potentially accommodate multiple people inside 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:13.720 of it or more thoroughly cover the diver's body. 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:17.560 There's also a Chinese text that was written in fifteen 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:20.720 eighty seven entitled The Exploitation of the Works of Nature, 0:07:21.280 --> 0:07:24.000 and this featured some interesting illustrations of people that are 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:27.400 walking on the seafloor and they're tethered by ropes to 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:30.600 ships above, and they have tubes that are basically going 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:32.720 from their mouths all the way up to the surface, 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:37.520 presumably to breathe through. I keep thinking about these books 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:40.240 that I love by this woman named Marie Brennan, and 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.640 they're called The Natural History of Dragons, and they're kind 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:48.080 of like a faux regency feeling fantasy series about this 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:52.280 widowed lady who studies dragons, and there's a whole arc 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:55.680 involving another guy that's doing research in a diving bell 0:07:55.720 --> 0:07:57.920 and how heavy the bell is and how cumbersome and 0:07:57.960 --> 0:07:59.520 how tricky it is to get it in and out, 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:00.880 and how much it ways in the ship and what 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:02.360 it inconvenience that causes. 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:04.800 Uh, that's what I've been thinking about the whole time 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:05.480 we've been talking. 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:08.240 Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things like we 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:10.080 talk about it, and yes, they dropped it in the water, 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:13.960 but like if it tipped it all get to one side, 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:16.720 they basically had to pull the whole incredibly heavy thing 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:17.800 up and start over. 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:20.840 So before we get to an advancement in this technology 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.200 that was made by a name very familiar to the podcast, 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:34.439 let's pause for a word from one of our fabulous sponsors. 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:38.480 In our recent episode on Sir Isaac Newton, we mentioned 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:41.400 Sir Edmund Halley, and it turns out that Halle also 0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:45.800 figures into the human desire to explore underwater. In sixteen 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:49.040 ninety one, Halle completely changed things by adding a system 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:51.960 that could replenish the air in the diving bell. It's 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:56.320 almost always the case in the world of invention. However, 0:08:56.960 --> 0:08:59.160 he was likely aware of and building on the work 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:01.960 of Danis Papa who in sixteen eighty nine came up 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:04.560 with a plan to pump fresh air into the diving bell. 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:06.600 Remember how he said before the break that he would 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:09.080 run out of oxygen, so this would get fresh air 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:09.480 in there. 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:13.200 Yep. And we've talked many times about how most big 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:15.680 breakthroughs in science and technology are building on the work 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:18.840 of others, so this is a very similar situation. And 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:22.280 pepez proposed method featured the use of a bellow system 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:25.520 that would pump air into a bell at a constant pressure. 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:29.880 But when Halle devised his system, he used a different method, 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:33.560 likely to differentiate himself from Pepina and avoid any claims 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:34.319 of plagiarism. 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:39.160 Halley's diving bell was made of wood encoated with lead. 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:42.760 It covered sixty cubic feet, so that's one point seven 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:45.480 cubic meters of volume, and it had a glass top 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:48.000 so that divers would have light while they were in there. 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:50.880 There was also a valve on the bell attached to 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:53.959 a barrel that could supply additional air. 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:57.440 And the barrel was suspended in the water by a 0:09:57.559 --> 0:09:59.400 rope and it could be pulled up to the surface 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:01.760 so they could rea fill it with fresh air and 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:04.720 then drop it back into the water, sinking thanks to 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:07.840 a weighted bottom, and Halle's design was the first that 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:11.600 enabled the equalization of pressure inside the bell and outside 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:13.680 the bell because of the valve system that was used 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.599 to supply this air, and it sometimes even referred to 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.360 as the precursor to the modern diving bell. Because of this, 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.000 Halle also ed in today's smaller bell shaped apparatus that 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:25.280 could be worn like a helmet, although its intent was 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:27.600 for the diver to be able to sort of get 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:29.920 out from the diving bell, not to be a separate 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:34.280 means to go underwater independently. And in a section of 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:38.840 Halle's seventeen fourteen to seventeen sixteen work titled Philosophical Transactions, 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:41.160 there is a section that is called it's a long 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:45.240 title the Art of Living underwater or a discourse concerning 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:47.360 the means of furnishing air to the bottom of the 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:51.560 sea in any ordinary depths. And in this section of 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:54.480 this work he detailed the data that he actually gathered 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:57.320 over years of experimenting with diving bells, and he explains 0:10:57.360 --> 0:10:59.120 how his particular technology works. 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:02.199 One thing he mentions in this writing is the information 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:05.040 gleaned from his testing but a gallon of air is 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:08.680 used up and no longer suitable for respiration after about 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:12.720 a minute. And quote though it's elasticity be but little altered, 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:16.720 yet in passing the lungs it loses its vivifying spirit. 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:20.679 Just kind of a poetic way to describe stale air. 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:23.320 Don't keep breathing that you're going to pass out. Yeah, 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:26.439 it's not going to work out well. In seventeen eighty eight, 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:29.520 there was another major advancement in diving technology and this 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:32.120 is made by John Smeaton when he invented the diving 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:35.800 air pump and Smeaton's pump required four men to operate it. 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:38.480 They were up on the surface and it ran air 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:40.760 through lines that attached to the top of the bell. 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.480 And Smeeton's pump more closely resembled the concepts that were 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:48.640 a big part of Denny Papa's work than the way 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:52.320 that Hallie eventually set up the air supply. And this 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.920 English engineer also redesigned the bell itself into a box 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:59.360 shape and he christened his a diving box, or rather 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:01.360 a diving check rather than a diving bell. 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:03.880 One thing we should mention here, and it really goes 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:06.680 for advancement in any field is that none of these 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:11.080 new technologies were instantly adopted. In fact, even though Smeeten's 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:14.720 pumps really advanced the field of diving, Halle's diving bells 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:16.920 stayed in use until the eighteen hundreds. 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:22.400 An English inventor named William James designed a suit in 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:25.800 eighteen twenty five that had a coil of metal tubing 0:12:25.840 --> 0:12:28.880 that wrapped around the diver's weight. The idea was that 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:32.880 air that was pumped into this tubing while they were 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:35.319 on the surface could provide a diver with an hour's 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:38.480 worth of underwater time, although there is no clear evidence, 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:41.120 like we don't have a data right up the way 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:43.360 that Halle did some of his that this suit was 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:44.480 ever actually tested. 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:49.680 The following decade, inventor Augustus Zeeba invented what's considered to 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:53.080 be the first diving dress. It's designed built on the 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:55.920 work of John and Charles Dean, who had invented a 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:59.360 smoke apparatus to enable firemen to breathe and move freely 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:03.320 in burning buildings. The Deans also adapted their invention into 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:06.720 a diving helmet designed to sit on the diver's shoulders 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:09.319 that would be fastened there with straps to a waste belt. 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:13.520 The Dean's patent diving dress was completed in eighteen twenty eight. 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:16.280 It was a good functioning design, but if the diver 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:20.160 couldn't stay upright underwater, the helmet would fill with water. 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:23.720 As an aside, John and Charles Dean also publish what 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:26.240 is believed to be the first diving manual in eighteen 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:30.520 thirty six. Augustus Diiba's design, which came out in eighteen 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:32.880 thirty nine, sealed the helmet to a diving suit to 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:36.480 eliminate the problem of water rushing in if the diver 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:39.280 tipped over or fell. 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:41.600 Yeah, and keeping in mind that when you're walking, if 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:45.440 you've ever walked underwater, you know that the seafloor is 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:49.240 not exactly the most stable and constant of situations to 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:51.880 be stepping on. So it is a very real possibility 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:55.600 that divers would shift side to side or lose their balance. 0:13:56.360 --> 0:14:00.120 In eighteen sixty the French team of Benoi Ukerole and 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.160 Augost de Nirouse came up with a suite design that 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:06.120 featured a compressed air reservoir in addition to an air 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:09.320 supply line. The idea was that for brief jaunts, the 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:12.840 diver could actually disconnect himself from that regular supply line 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:15.719 and rely solely on the compressed air reservoir that he 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:16.680 carried on his back. 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:20.440 If you've ever seen the original illustrations Virguals Burns twenty 0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:23.320 thousand leagues under the sea, the dive helmet in them 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:25.160 was based on these men's design. 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:28.920 In eighteen seventy eight, a man named Henry flus ushered 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:32.640 in a new era of diving technology when he patented 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:37.680 a self contained underwater breathing unit. Flues's rebreather included a 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:40.160 rubber mask it is super creepy looking if you see 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:44.120 pictures of it, a breathing bag and a copper oxygen tank, 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:46.480 and a scrubber that would clean and refresh the air. 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:50.280 The FLU system was closed, so the used air was 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:52.840 run through a link of rope yarn that had been 0:14:52.920 --> 0:14:57.120 soaked in caustic potash, which is also known as potassium hydroxide, 0:14:57.240 --> 0:15:00.360 to remove the carbon dioxide and make the air breathable again. 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:04.320 A captain in the French Navy named eve La Prier 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:07.520 paid a visit to an industrial expo at Paris's Grand 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:10.960 Palais in nineteen twenty five, and this was a pivotal 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:13.680 moment because he saw a diver in a demonstration there. 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:16.200 And while this diver was showing off a torch that 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:19.960 could cut iron underwater, that was not what fascinated Prier. 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:24.040 He was in fact drawn to the man's breathing apparatus, 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:26.680 and this was simply a rubber tube was held in 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:29.320 the diver's mouth and it ran up to the surface 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:31.960 and connected to a pump outside the water. But he 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:34.560 also wore goggles on his eyes and a rubber clip 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:37.800 on his nose. That particular piece of diving technology was 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.520 invented in the nineteen teens by a man named Maurice Bernez, 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:43.800 and it's unusual because it let the diver wear a 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:47.680 simple bathing suit and experience some freedom of movement. All 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:51.400 of the other diving setups that eve le Priere had 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:53.920 seen up to that point in his navy career had 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.640 been these really heavy helmets and these lead soled boots 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:00.440 that would really hinder your ability to move, or you 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:05.560 would have minimal functions under the water. But even with 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:09.160 the Expo tank diver's incredible ability to move, however, he 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.160 wished he was still tethered by that hose to his 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:16.040 air supply, and so Prierra was inspired to combine that 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:19.720 freedom that he noticed from the heavy helmet and boots 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:23.360 with a way to carry air independent, completely independent of 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:24.160 a supply line. 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:30.160 But first he very politely contacted Maurice Freney, the inventor 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:32.880 of a system that he had seen at the Grand 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:35.960 Pels demonstration, and he asked for permission to use that 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:39.800 system as a starting point for his own idea. And 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:42.320 so once he got that permission, he devised the system 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:45.000 that had a mouthpiece that attached to a bottle of 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:49.800 compressed air, which was a Michelin invention designed to inflate 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:54.040 car tires. Yeah, I loved this story because I love 0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:57.560 that one he got permission from another inventor to kind 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:00.760 of take off on his ideas too, that he was 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:05.679 so resourceful and a genius that he adapted a tire 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:09.920 inflation system to use as the air supply for divers, 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:14.399 and even la Prier further refined the design until he 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:18.280 was confident enough to debut it publicly, and he again 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:21.159 credited his predecessor. It was known as the Ferne la 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:24.760 Prier device. It still had the mouthpiece and the compressed air, 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.240 but he had also added these leather straps that kept 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:31.439 the air canister on the diver's back. Eventually, Laprier moved 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:34.280 the canister around the chest so that it wouldn't bang 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:37.520 into things about people knowing about it, as anyone who 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:40.960 has ever walked behind anyone at a convention wearing fairy 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:45.600 wings can attest to be important. In nineteen thirty three, 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:48.840 La Prier presented this new version of his apparatus under 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:52.119 his name exclusively, rather than the hyphenated name that his 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:56.440 previous work had had before. And next up, a very 0:17:56.560 --> 0:17:58.680 very famous name enters the picture in one that is 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:01.240 quite dear to me personally. But before we get there, 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:02.919 we're going to pause for a word from one of 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:15.000 our sponsors, eve Lea. Prierre continued to refine his underwater 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:18.480 breathing devices, and then in June of nineteen thirty nine 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:21.880 he had a visit from a naval lieutenant named Jacques Cousteau, 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:24.640 and the two men shared not only a naval background, 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:26.800 but also just a love of diving, and they really 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:31.600 hit it off. Several years later, in nineteen forty two, 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:34.919 Custeau once again visited La Prier this time with his 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:39.560 wife Simone and fellow diver Frederick Dubac. Cousteau had been 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:42.320 working on a diving device of his own and showed 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:46.320 it to La Prier. The elder diver offered him some feedback, 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:51.119 suggesting that Custeau altered the face mask designed. Specifically, Coustau's 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:53.560 version at the time only had a breathing hose to 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:55.800 the mouth, but La Prier thought the design would be 0:18:55.880 --> 0:19:01.359 safer if the mask covered the wearer's entire face. Yeah, Priyear, 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:03.600 we had talked about him having a tube to the mouth, 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:06.520 but it really did have like a this funky little 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:09.880 apparatus around your face, so it was really really secure, 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:12.320 and he felt like Cousteau's might be a little unsafe 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:13.880 because it wasn't quite. 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:18.160 As anchored around the whole head. And Jacques Cousteau partnered 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:21.760 shortly thereafter with Emio Gagne, who was a senior engineer 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:25.320 at a company called air Liquid that manufactured industrial gases, 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:28.919 and Cousteau's father in law, who also worked for air Liquid, 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:33.120 arranged this introduction of Cousteau and Gagne, and when Cousteau 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:36.359 and this man met, the engineer had actually been working 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:38.960 on a valve system already that would enable cars to 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:42.240 use natural gas instead of petrol, so once again there's 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:44.160 some borrowing from the automotive industry. 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:47.439 Jacques needed a similar valve for his diving design, but 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:50.159 one that would carry compressed air to the diver's lungs 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:54.000 through a breathing tube, and Gagniell designed a valve that 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:56.480 allowed the diver to control the flow of air by 0:19:56.520 --> 0:19:59.040 only delivering a stream of it when the mouthpiece that 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:02.359 contained the valve was sucked on. This design reduced the 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:04.600 pressure of the air so that the intake would be 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:07.440 suitable for a human, and then a rubber men brain 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:10.240 released the air when the diver sucked. 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:14.880 In, and after months of testing, Cousteau and Gagnon named 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:18.119 their device the Aquaalung and began to market it, and 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:22.439 Laprier's system, which had a continuous airflow system, was quickly 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:25.320 dropped in favor of the Cousteau Gagneo setup and its 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:26.200 demand valve. 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:29.960 The Aquaalung was offered commercially in France in nineteen forty 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:32.479 six and then in Great Britain in nineteen fifty, in 0:20:32.520 --> 0:20:34.920 Canada in nineteen fifty one, and in the United States 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:38.919 in nineteen fifty two. It became the first commercially successful 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:39.760 scuba device. 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:44.400 Laprier harbored some concerns about the demand valve that Cousteau 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:47.040 and his partner had worked on. He was really concerned 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:50.399 that if a diver lost consciousness underwater, he would drown 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:52.680 because again the diver had to suck on that little 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:56.160 valve to get the airflow, whereas Laprier's full face mask 0:20:56.640 --> 0:20:59.159 had this continuous flow, so it meant that even if 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:01.720 a diver passed out out, the mask wouldn't fall out 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:03.959 and they would still be getting an oxygen supply. 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:07.360 Just the same. La prier and adapted his own system 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:11.679 to offer diver regulated airflow. It was too late. Custeau's 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:14.720 system became the standard, and the two former navymen who 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:17.440 had once gotten along so beautifully wound up losing touch 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:20.840 because Custeau became famous both for his dive equipment and 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:24.840 for his underwater films. And we should also point out 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:30.240 that depending on which dive historian you ask or just 0:21:30.359 --> 0:21:34.800 dive aficionado, the person actually credited as the first scuba 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:38.560 diver differs. The word which actually stands for self contained 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:43.080 underwater breathing apparatus was not actually coined until the nineteen fifties, 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:46.720 and that was when Christian James Lamberston came up with 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:49.399 a new name for the rebreather system that he had 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.159 been working on for the US Navy during World War Two. 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:56.639