Category: Diving history from Renaissance to the present time

All the diving history from the Renaissance to the present time.

First recorded death in an accident with a submarine

Sadly on June 22, 1774, John Day, a carpenter and wheelwright became the first recorded death in a submersible. A bet between Day and Christopher Blake, who noticed his submarines before, was the trigger to attempt the dive.

Days's Submarine stone ballast 1772 Illustration from Murray Fraser Sueter.jpg
Days’s Submarine stone ballast 1772 Illustration from Murray Fraser Sueter

Day had previously experimented with other builds where he successfully submerged to 9m/30ft before. He was betting he could stay up to 12 hours at a depth of 40m/130ft. Day overestimated the ballast required to bring down his watertight chamber and sank to the bottom with no hope of rescue.

One of the first diving dress from Pierre Rémy de Beauve

Image from 1715, Pierre Rémy de Beauve Diving dress

In 1715, Sir Pierre Rémy de Beauve, a French aristocrat who served as “garde de la marine” in Brest, build one of the oldest known diving dress. A metal helmet connected to two hoses would allow the diver to breathe the air pumped by a bellow at the surface through one of the hose. The other would be used for the exhaled air.

The first ADS or atmospheric diving suit

Photo of Atmospheric Diving Suit ADS from Carmagnolle brothers 1882 - Musée national de la Marine, Paris, France

Two French brothers, Alphonse and Théodore Carmagnolle patented, in 1882, the first design of an atmospheric diving suit or ADS. The helmet featured 25 small glass viewing ports of 51mm/2-inch. The body was articulated with the help of 22 rolling convoluted joints were never completely waterproof. The whole suit weighted 380kg/840lbs. It was build but never put in service.

USS Holland The first commissioned submarine

On the 12th of October 1900, The USS Holland (SS-1) became the first commissioned submarine. Build by John Philip Holland in the earlier years, then named Holland VI was the 6th iteration of the design then. It was purchased for $150,000 on April 11th, 1900. At the christening, Holland VI after some modifications was renamed USS Holland (SS-1).

Photo of the USS Holland SS-1 The first commissioned submarine
USS Holland SS-1 The first commissioned submarine

Haldane and the first staged decompression tables

1910 Portrait photo of John Scott Haldane

In 1908, The Prevention of Compressed-air Illness published by John Scott Haldane, Arthur Boycott and Guybon Damant covers the detailed studies of Leonard Hill and their own on the cause and symptoms of decompression sickness. The publication also has the first table proposing staged decompression with stops to stop and avoid decompression sickness.

Leonard Erskine Hill theorized and tested the first continuous decompression

Photo of 2003 - Leonard Hill, the first to test proper decompression in the middle with 2 divers

Around 1900, Leonard Erskine Hill theorized that recompression could be used to treat decompression sickness and slow decompression would prevent compressed air illnesses. He wrote the first slow continuous decompression tables. He used this method to compress himself and Major Greenwood to a pressure of around 6 atmospheres and successfully decompressed themselves by allowing 20 minutes at every atmosphere as the pressure was being lowered.

The “Ohgushi’s Peerless Respirator”, the first scuba

Photo of Ohgushi Peerless Respirator from 1918

Ohgushi Scuba the first real SCUBAIn 1916, Japan, Riichi Watanabi and the blacksmith Kinzo Ohgushi invented the first scuba, the “Ohgushi’s Peerless Respirator. It could be used as a surfaced supplied unit or from steel cylinders filled with compressed air.

The mask covered the eyes and the nose much like the one of the Ama. The first demand valve scuba was operated by the diver mouth.

Riichi Watanabe First demand SCUBA mask designThe diver had to bite the valve mechanism and the force controlled the flow. In 1919 the British patenting office and in 1920 its counterpart in the US, patented the Ohgushi Respirator.

The “Fernez-Le Prieur” is the first european made scuba

Photo of Yves Le Prieur coming out of a pool equipped with a Fernez-Le Prieur scuba

In 1926 at the swimming pool of Tourelles in Paris, the “Fernez-Le Prieur”, the  European made scuba or self-contained underwater breathing apparatus was first demonstrated. The set was composed of a compressed air cylinder carried on the back and connected to a pressure regulator that was manually adjusted. The Fernez-Le Prieur was a constant flow unit and equipped with 2 pressure gauges. One for the tank pressure and the other for the pressure of the air flowing to the mouthpiece. It is the first unit to make diving untethered to the surface possible.

Many people believe this to be the first scuba but in 1918 in Japan, an inventor patented a similar idea.

The first single hose open-circuit scuba set

Photo of Ted Eldred in 2003 with an example of the world's first commercially available, single hose scuba unit, which was released early in 1952.

In 1952, an Australian named Ted Eldred start his work on the first single hose open-circuit scuba in Melbourne. The Porpoise CA-1 for Compressed Air model 1 came as a set composed of a second stage, a first stage and a single tank. Only about 12,000 were produced.