Aqua Lung International
| Aqua Lung International
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1946 (under the name La Spirotechnique ) |
| Seat | Carros , Alpes-Maritimes (France) |
| management | Don Rockwell |
| Number of employees | 500 (as of 2009) |
| Website | www.aqualung.com |
Aqua Lung International (until the early 1990s La Spirotechnique ) is a manufacturer of diving equipment for military , professional and sport divers . Until 2016, the company belonged to the Air Liquide group, which also owns a sister company called Aqua Lung America , and was sold to the British Montagu Private Equity in 2016 .
Company history
In December 1942, Jacques-Yves Cousteau met for the first time in Paris with Émile Gagnan , an engineer with the Air Liquide company, which had specialized in the distillation of liquid air . Because of the rationing of gasoline in World War II , Gagnan and Cousteau developed a miniaturized gas generator together . Inspired by the inventions of engineers Benoît Rouquayrol and Auguste Denayrouze in 1860, Cousteau and Gagnan developed a regulator for divers, which they patented in 1943 . In the same year, two prototypes were made, which Frédéric Dumas and Cousteau used when shooting their underwater film Épaves ('Shipwrecks').
Shortly after the Second World War, Cousteau and Gagnan developed a highly optimized version of their regulator, the CG45 . In 1946 Air Liquide founded the subsidiary La Spirotechnique to mass- produce diving equipment . This step made a high-quality regulator available for the first time at affordable prices. This contributed significantly to the emergence and development of recreational diving in the 1950s. In 1946 Air Liquide began marketing the CG45 under the Aqua Lung brand in Anglo-Saxon countries.
While in the USA the acronym SCUBA prevailed, established itself - due to the large spread of Aqualung CG45 - in the UK the term Aqualung in the vernacular as the name for a diving apparatus . Until 1955, La Spirotechnique sold only one machine model, the CG45, among other diving equipment . Then the production of the successor model Mistral began . Like its predecessor, this was also a two-hose machine . Unaware that Ted Eldred had already started selling a one- hose machine in Australia in 1952, La Spirotechnique also marketed a one- hose machine called Cristal as a world first in 1955 . In the English-speaking world, this one- hose machine was sold under the name Aquamatic .
In the USA, US Divers was the general importer for Aqua Lung products for many years . Air Liquide later took over US Divers and renamed the company Aqua Lung America . US Divers continued to exist as a brand. La Spirotechnique was renamed Aqua Lung International in the early 1990s .
Aqua Lung International and Aqua Lung America
In addition to US Divers , Aqua Lung International and Aqua Lung America also own the brands known for water and underwater equipment : Aqua Sphere , Deep Sea , Apeks , Whites , Aerial and Stohlquist . Today Aqua Lung International and Aqua Lung America are subsidiaries of Air Liquide, with more than 200 employees in the USA and over 500 worldwide. Aqua Lung currently operates twelve offices worldwide.
Individual evidence
- ↑ International Distributors, Aqua Lung International ( Memento from September 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved September 4, 2012.
- ↑ a b About the company , Aqua Lung International. Retrieved September 4, 2012.
- ↑ a b c Aqua Lung 1947-2007 (French), plongeur.com. Retrieved September 4, 2012.
- ↑ Airliquide: Air Liquide Completes the Sale of Aqua Lung to Montagu Private Equity. Press release dated December 30, 2016, accessed December 9, 2018.
- ↑ http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=-7129034295428118398 (link not available)
- ↑ Lambertsen's homage , passedaway.com
- ^ Aqua Lung International (Worldwide) . Retrieved September 4, 2012.