Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. When we talked about divers going to the
Speaker 1: wreck of the Empress of Ireland in nineteen fourteen, I
Speaker 1: found myself idly wondering exactly what the diving technology was
Speaker 1: like that they were using at the time, and we
Speaker 1: have a whole episode on that subject, not the specifics
Speaker 1: of the dive to the Empress of Ireland or exactly
Speaker 1: what they would have been using, but on the development
Speaker 1: of diving technology, from the earliest diving bells up to
Speaker 1: self contained breathing systems.
Speaker 2: This originally came out on December second, twenty fifteen. Enjoy
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly from It's Tracy B.
Speaker 2: Wilson in the No Surprise department. The relationship that humans
Speaker 2: have had with bodies of water throughout history has pretty
Speaker 2: much always been one of fascination, and it seems like
Speaker 2: we have always been trying to find ways to transcend
Speaker 2: the limits of our pesky air breathing lungs so that
Speaker 2: we can get some time underwater. You have surely heard
Speaker 2: innumerable times that approximately seventy percent of the Earth's surfaces
Speaker 2: water so it makes sense that curious humans would be
Speaker 2: yearning to scope out the situation in the deep, and
Speaker 2: while humans were diving on their own for centuries before
Speaker 2: they started building assistance apparatus to do so. Today we're
Speaker 2: going to talk a little bit just about the history
Speaker 2: of the technology, specifically that's evolved over the centuries to
Speaker 2: give us some FaceTime with the fish without suffocating. We're
Speaker 2: going to cover inventions designed specifically to enable humans to
Speaker 2: breathe underwater. While there are plenty of other advancements to
Speaker 2: diving like fins and wetsuits, etc. We're pretty much focusing
Speaker 2: on the air here and like things that have enabled
Speaker 2: us to breathe. And as a heads up going into
Speaker 2: this one in case you are a real dive historian,
Speaker 2: I want to be clear that this is by no
Speaker 2: means an exhaustive history on the matter. If you go
Speaker 2: to any like even diving fan site and see their
Speaker 2: discussion of dive history, there is usually a list roughly
Speaker 2: one kilometer long of like various advancements that have been
Speaker 2: made through the years, and so we can't really cover
Speaker 2: all of those without just reading a long list, which
Speaker 2: would be boring because it has developed incrementally over centuries,
Speaker 2: and it includes the work of just multitudes, So there's
Speaker 2: no way to include every single step in the course
Speaker 2: of one of our podcasts, so we're hitting as many
Speaker 2: of the key historical moments as possible.
Speaker 1: The first recorded account of some kind of diving technology
Speaker 1: that was designed to let humans breathe underwater was mentioned
Speaker 1: by Aristotle in the fourth century BCE in his Book
Speaker 1: of Problems. I love that name. This was a diving bell,
Speaker 1: and Aristotle described diving bells by saying, quote, they enable
Speaker 1: the divers to respire equally well by letting down a
Speaker 1: cauldron where this does not fill with water but retains
Speaker 1: the air where it is forced straight down into the water.
Speaker 1: You're having trouble visualizing that. It's like when you're a
Speaker 1: kid and you're putting the cup down in the sink,
Speaker 1: but in a way that's a vacuum, so that you
Speaker 1: don't or it's not a value, doesn't let the water in,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm trying to say. So as a note,
Speaker 1: there is some debate about whether Aristotle actually wrote the
Speaker 1: Book of Problems, So take that with a grain of salt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of those many historical documents that people some
Speaker 1: people anyways, believe actually was written by someone later and
Speaker 1: then attributed to Aristotle. So also in the late fourth
Speaker 1: century BCE, Macedonian king Alexander the Great is on record
Speaker 1: as having employed a diving bell to explore the seas
Speaker 1: that was beginning as early as age eleven, according to
Speaker 1: this sort of legend, So during the Battle of tyr
Speaker 1: he has said to have used a diving bell to
Speaker 1: supervise the work of divers that were under his command
Speaker 1: and were tasked with removing obstacles that would prevent passage
Speaker 1: into port. And once again there is some debate about
Speaker 1: the truth of that account.
Speaker 2: But there are, if you are a lover of visual mediums,
Speaker 2: some truly spectacular renderings of Alexander the Great submerged in
Speaker 2: the glass bell and observing the world from his underwater vantage.
Speaker 2: Some of them almost look creepy. There's one that I
Speaker 2: ran across where it looks like he is kind of
Speaker 2: creeping on some lovers in a boat on the surface
Speaker 2: of the water. And there are others that just sort
Speaker 2: of look like him merrily sitting in his diving bell,
Speaker 2: kind of enjoying his view of the world from there.
Speaker 1: I'll see if I can find some pictures of this
Speaker 1: to put in our show notes. A most basic and
Speaker 1: classic example of a diving bell is narrow at the
Speaker 1: top and open at the bottom, so bell shaped like
Speaker 1: its name describes. As you push the bell straight down
Speaker 1: into the water, the air is trapped inside of it,
Speaker 1: so there's basically a bubble inside there in which a
Speaker 1: human can breathe. That's fine for a limited time before
Speaker 1: the oxygen is basically used up, and then you have
Speaker 1: to come back to the surface. And in order for
Speaker 1: a diving bell to counteract the buoyancy created by that
Speaker 1: air pocket that enables breathing, it also has to be
Speaker 1: quite heavy, so an open bottom diving bell also can't
Speaker 1: go very deep into water. There's a Peruvian vase dating
Speaker 1: back to around the year two hundred that depicts a
Speaker 1: human figure and on huge that figure's face is painted
Speaker 1: something that's been interpreted to signify goggles. The goggle interpretation
Speaker 1: was arrived at due to the fact that this figure
Speaker 1: is also holding fish in.
Speaker 2: Each of his hands. Yeah, so it's a pretty cute
Speaker 2: little vase. So then the next one of the next
Speaker 2: sort of major steps of where we see some sort
Speaker 2: of diving event happening in history is around fifteen hundred,
Speaker 2: Leonardo da Vinci was sketching out ideas for what appeared
Speaker 2: to be diving apparatus, but it seems that he never
Speaker 2: actually built one.
Speaker 1: Despite accounts going centuries back in the historical record, it
Speaker 1: wasn't until the sixth teenth century that a successful diving
Speaker 1: bell submersion was conclusively documented. In the fifteen thirties, Italy's
Speaker 1: Lake Nemi was explored in a diving bell designed by
Speaker 1: Gullielmo de Lorrena as part of an operation to salvage
Speaker 1: barges that dated back to the time of Caligula.
Speaker 2: And in a write up in Scientific American that was
Speaker 2: done in nineteen oh nine, there was an account of
Speaker 2: this fifteen thirty five Lake Nemi dive, and it describes
Speaker 2: the apparatus in the following way. Master Guriamo de Lorena
Speaker 2: made a contrivance by which he entered the water and
Speaker 2: made himself descend to the bottom of the lake, and
Speaker 2: there he remained an hour more or less just as
Speaker 2: he wished, until the cold drove him up again. With
Speaker 2: this contrivance of his one can work sawing cutting corking
Speaker 2: up tying ropes. One can also operate with hammers, chisels, pinchers,
Speaker 2: and other such tools, though one can use but little
Speaker 2: force because of the hindrance of the water.
Speaker 1: So apparently this version of a diving bell left the
Speaker 1: wearer with a lot of range of motion, so it
Speaker 1: suggested that it was smaller a personal sized diving bell,
Speaker 1: rather than one that could potentially accommodate multiple people inside
Speaker 1: of it or more thoroughly cover the diver's body.
Speaker 2: There's also a Chinese text that was written in fifteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven entitled The Exploitation of the Works of Nature,
Speaker 2: and this featured some interesting illustrations of people that are
Speaker 2: walking on the seafloor and they're tethered by ropes to
Speaker 2: ships above, and they have tubes that are basically going
Speaker 2: from their mouths all the way up to the surface,
Speaker 2: presumably to breathe through. I keep thinking about these books
Speaker 2: that I love by this woman named Marie Brennan, and
Speaker 2: they're called The Natural History of Dragons, and they're kind
Speaker 2: of like a faux regency feeling fantasy series about this
Speaker 2: widowed lady who studies dragons, and there's a whole arc
Speaker 2: involving another guy that's doing research in a diving bell
Speaker 2: and how heavy the bell is and how cumbersome and
Speaker 2: how tricky it is to get it in and out,
Speaker 2: and how much it ways in the ship and what
Speaker 2: it inconvenience that causes.
Speaker 1: Uh, that's what I've been thinking about the whole time
Speaker 1: we've been talking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things like we
Speaker 2: talk about it, and yes, they dropped it in the water,
Speaker 2: but like if it tipped it all get to one side,
Speaker 2: they basically had to pull the whole incredibly heavy thing
Speaker 2: up and start over.
Speaker 1: So before we get to an advancement in this technology
Speaker 1: that was made by a name very familiar to the podcast,
Speaker 1: let's pause for a word from one of our fabulous sponsors.
Speaker 1: In our recent episode on Sir Isaac Newton, we mentioned
Speaker 1: Sir Edmund Halley, and it turns out that Halle also
Speaker 1: figures into the human desire to explore underwater. In sixteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, Halle completely changed things by adding a system
Speaker 1: that could replenish the air in the diving bell. It's
Speaker 1: almost always the case in the world of invention. However,
Speaker 1: he was likely aware of and building on the work
Speaker 1: of Danis Papa who in sixteen eighty nine came up
Speaker 1: with a plan to pump fresh air into the diving bell.
Speaker 1: Remember how he said before the break that he would
Speaker 1: run out of oxygen, so this would get fresh air
Speaker 1: in there.
Speaker 2: Yep. And we've talked many times about how most big
Speaker 2: breakthroughs in science and technology are building on the work
Speaker 2: of others, so this is a very similar situation. And
Speaker 2: pepez proposed method featured the use of a bellow system
Speaker 2: that would pump air into a bell at a constant pressure.
Speaker 2: But when Halle devised his system, he used a different method,
Speaker 2: likely to differentiate himself from Pepina and avoid any claims
Speaker 2: of plagiarism.
Speaker 1: Halley's diving bell was made of wood encoated with lead.
Speaker 1: It covered sixty cubic feet, so that's one point seven
Speaker 1: cubic meters of volume, and it had a glass top
Speaker 1: so that divers would have light while they were in there.
Speaker 1: There was also a valve on the bell attached to
Speaker 1: a barrel that could supply additional air.
Speaker 2: And the barrel was suspended in the water by a
Speaker 2: rope and it could be pulled up to the surface
Speaker 2: so they could rea fill it with fresh air and
Speaker 2: then drop it back into the water, sinking thanks to
Speaker 2: a weighted bottom, and Halle's design was the first that
Speaker 2: enabled the equalization of pressure inside the bell and outside
Speaker 2: the bell because of the valve system that was used
Speaker 2: to supply this air, and it sometimes even referred to
Speaker 2: as the precursor to the modern diving bell. Because of this,
Speaker 2: Halle also ed in today's smaller bell shaped apparatus that
Speaker 2: could be worn like a helmet, although its intent was
Speaker 2: for the diver to be able to sort of get
Speaker 2: out from the diving bell, not to be a separate
Speaker 2: means to go underwater independently. And in a section of
Speaker 2: Halle's seventeen fourteen to seventeen sixteen work titled Philosophical Transactions,
Speaker 2: there is a section that is called it's a long
Speaker 2: title the Art of Living underwater or a discourse concerning
Speaker 2: the means of furnishing air to the bottom of the
Speaker 2: sea in any ordinary depths. And in this section of
Speaker 2: this work he detailed the data that he actually gathered
Speaker 2: over years of experimenting with diving bells, and he explains
Speaker 2: how his particular technology works.
Speaker 1: One thing he mentions in this writing is the information
Speaker 1: gleaned from his testing but a gallon of air is
Speaker 1: used up and no longer suitable for respiration after about
Speaker 1: a minute. And quote though it's elasticity be but little altered,
Speaker 1: yet in passing the lungs it loses its vivifying spirit.
Speaker 2: Just kind of a poetic way to describe stale air.
Speaker 2: Don't keep breathing that you're going to pass out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not going to work out well. In seventeen eighty eight,
Speaker 2: there was another major advancement in diving technology and this
Speaker 2: is made by John Smeaton when he invented the diving
Speaker 2: air pump and Smeaton's pump required four men to operate it.
Speaker 2: They were up on the surface and it ran air
Speaker 2: through lines that attached to the top of the bell.
Speaker 2: And Smeeton's pump more closely resembled the concepts that were
Speaker 2: a big part of Denny Papa's work than the way
Speaker 2: that Hallie eventually set up the air supply. And this
Speaker 2: English engineer also redesigned the bell itself into a box
Speaker 2: shape and he christened his a diving box, or rather
Speaker 2: a diving check rather than a diving bell.
Speaker 1: One thing we should mention here, and it really goes
Speaker 1: for advancement in any field is that none of these
Speaker 1: new technologies were instantly adopted. In fact, even though Smeeten's
Speaker 1: pumps really advanced the field of diving, Halle's diving bells
Speaker 1: stayed in use until the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: An English inventor named William James designed a suit in
Speaker 2: eighteen twenty five that had a coil of metal tubing
Speaker 2: that wrapped around the diver's weight. The idea was that
Speaker 2: air that was pumped into this tubing while they were
Speaker 2: on the surface could provide a diver with an hour's
Speaker 2: worth of underwater time, although there is no clear evidence,
Speaker 2: like we don't have a data right up the way
Speaker 2: that Halle did some of his that this suit was
Speaker 2: ever actually tested.
Speaker 1: The following decade, inventor Augustus Zeeba invented what's considered to
Speaker 1: be the first diving dress. It's designed built on the
Speaker 1: work of John and Charles Dean, who had invented a
Speaker 1: smoke apparatus to enable firemen to breathe and move freely
Speaker 1: in burning buildings. The Deans also adapted their invention into
Speaker 1: a diving helmet designed to sit on the diver's shoulders
Speaker 1: that would be fastened there with straps to a waste belt.
Speaker 1: The Dean's patent diving dress was completed in eighteen twenty eight.
Speaker 1: It was a good functioning design, but if the diver
Speaker 1: couldn't stay upright underwater, the helmet would fill with water.
Speaker 1: As an aside, John and Charles Dean also publish what
Speaker 1: is believed to be the first diving manual in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty six. Augustus Diiba's design, which came out in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, sealed the helmet to a diving suit to
Speaker 1: eliminate the problem of water rushing in if the diver
Speaker 1: tipped over or fell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and keeping in mind that when you're walking, if
Speaker 2: you've ever walked underwater, you know that the seafloor is
Speaker 2: not exactly the most stable and constant of situations to
Speaker 2: be stepping on. So it is a very real possibility
Speaker 2: that divers would shift side to side or lose their balance.
Speaker 2: In eighteen sixty the French team of Benoi Ukerole and
Speaker 2: Augost de Nirouse came up with a suite design that
Speaker 2: featured a compressed air reservoir in addition to an air
Speaker 2: supply line. The idea was that for brief jaunts, the
Speaker 2: diver could actually disconnect himself from that regular supply line
Speaker 2: and rely solely on the compressed air reservoir that he
Speaker 2: carried on his back.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen the original illustrations Virguals Burns twenty
Speaker 1: thousand leagues under the sea, the dive helmet in them
Speaker 1: was based on these men's design.
Speaker 2: In eighteen seventy eight, a man named Henry flus ushered
Speaker 2: in a new era of diving technology when he patented
Speaker 2: a self contained underwater breathing unit. Flues's rebreather included a
Speaker 2: rubber mask it is super creepy looking if you see
Speaker 2: pictures of it, a breathing bag and a copper oxygen tank,
Speaker 2: and a scrubber that would clean and refresh the air.
Speaker 1: The FLU system was closed, so the used air was
Speaker 1: run through a link of rope yarn that had been
Speaker 1: soaked in caustic potash, which is also known as potassium hydroxide,
Speaker 1: to remove the carbon dioxide and make the air breathable again.
Speaker 2: A captain in the French Navy named eve La Prier
Speaker 2: paid a visit to an industrial expo at Paris's Grand
Speaker 2: Palais in nineteen twenty five, and this was a pivotal
Speaker 2: moment because he saw a diver in a demonstration there.
Speaker 2: And while this diver was showing off a torch that
Speaker 2: could cut iron underwater, that was not what fascinated Prier.
Speaker 2: He was in fact drawn to the man's breathing apparatus,
Speaker 2: and this was simply a rubber tube was held in
Speaker 2: the diver's mouth and it ran up to the surface
Speaker 2: and connected to a pump outside the water. But he
Speaker 2: also wore goggles on his eyes and a rubber clip
Speaker 2: on his nose. That particular piece of diving technology was
Speaker 2: invented in the nineteen teens by a man named Maurice Bernez,
Speaker 2: and it's unusual because it let the diver wear a
Speaker 2: simple bathing suit and experience some freedom of movement. All
Speaker 2: of the other diving setups that eve le Priere had
Speaker 2: seen up to that point in his navy career had
Speaker 2: been these really heavy helmets and these lead soled boots
Speaker 2: that would really hinder your ability to move, or you
Speaker 2: would have minimal functions under the water. But even with
Speaker 2: the Expo tank diver's incredible ability to move, however, he
Speaker 2: wished he was still tethered by that hose to his
Speaker 2: air supply, and so Prierra was inspired to combine that
Speaker 2: freedom that he noticed from the heavy helmet and boots
Speaker 2: with a way to carry air independent, completely independent of
Speaker 2: a supply line.
Speaker 1: But first he very politely contacted Maurice Freney, the inventor
Speaker 1: of a system that he had seen at the Grand
Speaker 1: Pels demonstration, and he asked for permission to use that
Speaker 1: system as a starting point for his own idea. And
Speaker 1: so once he got that permission, he devised the system
Speaker 1: that had a mouthpiece that attached to a bottle of
Speaker 1: compressed air, which was a Michelin invention designed to inflate
Speaker 1: car tires. Yeah, I loved this story because I love
Speaker 1: that one he got permission from another inventor to kind
Speaker 1: of take off on his ideas too, that he was
Speaker 1: so resourceful and a genius that he adapted a tire
Speaker 1: inflation system to use as the air supply for divers,
Speaker 1: and even la Prier further refined the design until he
Speaker 1: was confident enough to debut it publicly, and he again
Speaker 1: credited his predecessor. It was known as the Ferne la
Speaker 1: Prier device. It still had the mouthpiece and the compressed air,
Speaker 1: but he had also added these leather straps that kept
Speaker 1: the air canister on the diver's back. Eventually, Laprier moved
Speaker 1: the canister around the chest so that it wouldn't bang
Speaker 1: into things about people knowing about it, as anyone who
Speaker 1: has ever walked behind anyone at a convention wearing fairy
Speaker 1: wings can attest to be important. In nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: La Prier presented this new version of his apparatus under
Speaker 1: his name exclusively, rather than the hyphenated name that his
Speaker 1: previous work had had before. And next up, a very
Speaker 1: very famous name enters the picture in one that is
Speaker 1: quite dear to me personally. But before we get there,
Speaker 1: we're going to pause for a word from one of
Speaker 1: our sponsors, eve Lea. Prierre continued to refine his underwater
Speaker 1: breathing devices, and then in June of nineteen thirty nine
Speaker 1: he had a visit from a naval lieutenant named Jacques Cousteau,
Speaker 1: and the two men shared not only a naval background,
Speaker 1: but also just a love of diving, and they really
Speaker 1: hit it off. Several years later, in nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: Custeau once again visited La Prier this time with his
Speaker 1: wife Simone and fellow diver Frederick Dubac. Cousteau had been
Speaker 1: working on a diving device of his own and showed
Speaker 1: it to La Prier. The elder diver offered him some feedback,
Speaker 1: suggesting that Custeau altered the face mask designed. Specifically, Coustau's
Speaker 1: version at the time only had a breathing hose to
Speaker 1: the mouth, but La Prier thought the design would be
Speaker 1: safer if the mask covered the wearer's entire face. Yeah, Priyear,
Speaker 1: we had talked about him having a tube to the mouth,
Speaker 1: but it really did have like a this funky little
Speaker 1: apparatus around your face, so it was really really secure,
Speaker 1: and he felt like Cousteau's might be a little unsafe
Speaker 1: because it wasn't quite.
Speaker 2: As anchored around the whole head. And Jacques Cousteau partnered
Speaker 2: shortly thereafter with Emio Gagne, who was a senior engineer
Speaker 2: at a company called air Liquid that manufactured industrial gases,
Speaker 2: and Cousteau's father in law, who also worked for air Liquid,
Speaker 2: arranged this introduction of Cousteau and Gagne, and when Cousteau
Speaker 2: and this man met, the engineer had actually been working
Speaker 2: on a valve system already that would enable cars to
Speaker 2: use natural gas instead of petrol, so once again there's
Speaker 2: some borrowing from the automotive industry.
Speaker 1: Jacques needed a similar valve for his diving design, but
Speaker 1: one that would carry compressed air to the diver's lungs
Speaker 1: through a breathing tube, and Gagniell designed a valve that
Speaker 1: allowed the diver to control the flow of air by
Speaker 1: only delivering a stream of it when the mouthpiece that
Speaker 1: contained the valve was sucked on. This design reduced the
Speaker 1: pressure of the air so that the intake would be
Speaker 1: suitable for a human, and then a rubber men brain
Speaker 1: released the air when the diver sucked.
Speaker 2: In, and after months of testing, Cousteau and Gagnon named
Speaker 2: their device the Aquaalung and began to market it, and
Speaker 2: Laprier's system, which had a continuous airflow system, was quickly
Speaker 2: dropped in favor of the Cousteau Gagneo setup and its
Speaker 2: demand valve.
Speaker 1: The Aquaalung was offered commercially in France in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: six and then in Great Britain in nineteen fifty, in
Speaker 1: Canada in nineteen fifty one, and in the United States
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two. It became the first commercially successful
Speaker 1: scuba device.
Speaker 2: Laprier harbored some concerns about the demand valve that Cousteau
Speaker 2: and his partner had worked on. He was really concerned
Speaker 2: that if a diver lost consciousness underwater, he would drown
Speaker 2: because again the diver had to suck on that little
Speaker 2: valve to get the airflow, whereas Laprier's full face mask
Speaker 2: had this continuous flow, so it meant that even if
Speaker 2: a diver passed out out, the mask wouldn't fall out
Speaker 2: and they would still be getting an oxygen supply.
Speaker 1: Just the same. La prier and adapted his own system
Speaker 1: to offer diver regulated airflow. It was too late. Custeau's
Speaker 1: system became the standard, and the two former navymen who
Speaker 1: had once gotten along so beautifully wound up losing touch
Speaker 1: because Custeau became famous both for his dive equipment and
Speaker 1: for his underwater films. And we should also point out
Speaker 1: that depending on which dive historian you ask or just
Speaker 1: dive aficionado, the person actually credited as the first scuba
Speaker 1: diver differs. The word which actually stands for self contained
Speaker 1: underwater breathing apparatus was not actually coined until the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and that was when Christian James Lamberston came up with
Speaker 1: a new name for the rebreather system that he had
Speaker 1: been working on for the US Navy during World War Two.
Speaker 2: Just the same the name has been retroactively applied to
Speaker 2: numerous systems, and it is often associated with and sometimes
Speaker 2: I scidentally credited to Custeau.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since
Speaker 1: this episode is out of the archive, if you heard
Speaker 1: an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar
Speaker 1: over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Speaker 1: Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find us all over social media at missed Indistory,
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