Diving schedule

Timeline of the history of diving .

Diving in prehistoric times and ancient times

The legendary dive of Alexander the Great in a representation of the 16th century

• approx. 4500 BC Chr .: Freedivers in East Asia, India and the Arabian Sea bring pearls , mother-of-pearl , sponges and corals out of the sea.
• from approx. 2500 BC BC: Greek freedivers mainly fetch sponges in large quantities from the Mediterranean.
• approx. 460 BC Chr .: The Greek Scyllias dives for sunken ships in the Mediterranean Sea to find treasures. He allegedly carries air with him in an upside-down kettle.
• approx. 450 BC Chr .: The first marine divers are deployed in Greece. They are supposed to drill into enemy ships underwater.
• approx. 350 BC Chr .: Aristotle reports of sponge divers who use diving bells.
• approx. 340 BC Chr .: Allegedly Alexander the Great made a diving attempt in the Mediterranean at a young age.
• approx. 20 BC Chr .: Queen Cleopatra suspects Mark Antony of cheating while fishing and lets divers hang fish that are already salted on him.
• approx. 60 AD: Pliny the Elder reports in his writings about combat divers whom he had equipped with snorkels .

Diving in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

• Around 1500 Leonardo da Vinci designed a diving suit in Venice, which should enable the sinking of the Turkish navy. He provided for a pigskin suit; the cap should have two glass lenses the size of the palm of your hand. Da Vinci thought of the air supply by means of a bellows over two hoses. As part of a BBC series about da Vinci's work, the diver Jacquie Cozens attempted diving in a replica in 2003. Cozens "survived" some time at depths of about 2-3 meters, but without being able to carry out any serious work in the suit.
• In 1538 a diving bell was demonstrated in Toledo . The principle, which was already known from antiquity but has since been forgotten, was rediscovered, but initially did not really take hold.

Dives in the 18th and 19th centuries

• 1715: The British John Lethbridge builds his diving engine .
• 1725: The Lethbridge dipping barrel is used for mining work off Portugal.
• 1797: With a hose-supplied helmet diving suit made by the German Heinrich Klingert , it was possible to saw through a tree trunk at a depth of about 6 m in the Oder near Breslau.
• 1800: The captain Peter Kreeft from Barth demonstrates a working helmet diving suit in the Baltic Sea.

Historical diving helmet

• 1819: Open helmet diving suit through sieves. The air escapes under the diver's jacket.
• 1829: The Englishmen Charles and John Deane of Whitstable invent (or perfect) helmet diving with external air supply.
• 1838: The German gunsmith August Siebe (Saxony), who emigrated to England, develops the helmet diving suit. Until the development of the “standard diving apparatus”, there was a risk that incorrect movement of the diver could cause water to penetrate the helmet and drown the diver in the helmet. Siebe's suit was firmly attached to the helmet so that water was prevented from entering. The helmet diver will remain the essential technology used in practice until the invention of the regulator.
  

  Helmet divers 1837
• 1839–1845: Salvage work on the battleship HMS Royal George, which sank off Spithead in 1782. Development of basic working techniques under water. Use of Siebe's closed diving helmet, application of the two-man principle.
• 1840–1900: Beginning of caisson work, medical description of caisson disease following accidents .
• 1865: The French Rouquayrol and Denayrouze develop the forerunner of the diving device with a regulator. The air supply either comes from the surface via a hose or is autonomous, i.e. possible without a hose. See: Rouquayrol-Denayrouze
• 1893: first underwater photography (plate camera) by the French Louis Boutan .

Development of diving in the 20th century

Dive to the wreck ...

... the Lusitania , 1935

• 1906: British diver William Walker begins diving under the foundations of Winchester Cathedral to restore the building's stability. His groundbreaking mission lasted until 1911.
• 1906–1908 Development and publication of the first decompression tables by Sir John Haldane.
• 1911: The German company Dräger develops a helmet diving device with a hose-free breathing air supply from a rebreather , which had already been used in a diving reserve for submarine crews since 1907 . From 1912 the tubeless helmet diving device successfully asserted itself on the market.
• 1917: Development of the first practicable armored diving device by Neufeldt and Kuhnke .
• 1918: The Japanese patent a system in Great Britain called “Ohgushi's Peerless Respirator”, a set of cylinders filled with air compressed to almost 200 bar and worn on the back of a helmet diver.
• 1919: Professor Elihu Thompson, an electronics engineer and inventor suggests helium as a suitable gas for deep diving to avoid nitrogen anesthesia.
• 1925: The French Yves Le Prieur demonstrates helmetless diving with a compressed air cylinder. The air flows continuously into a full face mask and has to be regulated manually depending on the depth. The device does not have a regulator .
• 1926: Dräger launches a swimming diving reserve. A rebreather supplied the porter with oxygen for about three quarters of an hour to search for and rescue swimmers who had had an accident.
• 1933: The French Louis Ce Corlieu develops the first fins - he patented them first in France and later also in the USA. Marketing by the businessman Churchill. Similar constructions or further developments, also by other people, follow.
• 1937: Using the decompression calculations by Edgar Ende, the diver Max Eugene Nohl reached a world record depth of 420 feet near Lake Michigan with the assistance of Captain John Craig using a breathing gas mixture of 80% helium and 20% oxygen (Heliox). 128 m).
• 1937 ff .: After experience as a freediver, the biologist Hans Hass begins researching underwater life. He uses a converted Dräger oxygen cycle device and continues the work he has made known in films and television after the war.
• 1937–1939: The American Charles Swede Momsen begins research into breathing gases and the nitrogen anesthesia that occurs when diving with compressed air. A diving bell developed by him rescues 33 men from the sunken submarine Squalus in 1939 . Diving rescuers in submarine training, use of helium as an inert gas in breathing gas mixtures for helmet divers.
• 1942–1943: After the consumption-controlled regulator by Rouquayrol and Denayrouse (1864) had been forgotten, Georges Commeinhes and Emile Gagnan developed the so-called "Aqualung", the first regulator, at the suggestion of Jacques-Yves Cousteau . The regulator becomes the pioneer of today's recreational diving.
• 1939–1945: During the Second World War , the diving rescuer saves the lives of countless submarine crews from all over the world. At the same time, the same breathing apparatus is used by frogmen , combat swimmers and the Italian and British manned torpedoes .
• January 1943: Patent registration of "Aqualung"
• 1946: Cousteau's Aqualung is launched on the French market. First launched in other countries: 1950 UK, 1951 Canada and 1952 USA
• August 1947: Frenchman Dumas sets up a new underwater world recoder: 307 feet in the Mediterranean.
• 1949: Barakuda (today International Aquanautic Club ) is founded by Hans-Joachim Bergann and Dr. Kurt Ristau founded in Germany.
• 1950: France has exported 10 Aqualunges to the USA to date. The local dealer explains to Cousteau : "The market is saturated!". History shows that this was a misjudgment.
• 1955: Development of the two-stage regulator by Gautier and Bronnec.
• 1957: Cousteau's companion Phillipe Tailliez uses underwater photography for the first time to map and investigate a wreck.
• 1959–1963: Introduction of the decometer, a widespread mechanical-pneumatic predecessor of the dive computer .
• 1961: Hannes Keller and McLeish dive to 230 meters in Lake Maggiore. Back on the surface after just one hour thanks to an optimized gas mixture change.
• 1962: After working on the Bühlmann decoration table, the Swiss Hannes Keller made a dive to over 300 meters. Change of breathing gas mixture according to the saturation or depth during the dive. Death of Peter Small and a backup diver in a diving accident.
• 1962–1970: The underwater stations of the French Precontinent and American Sealab programs are used to research offshore diving technology and saturation diving.
• 1968: Development of the first electronically mixing rebreather, ElectroLung. Deaths from used soda lime .
• 1969: Development of the first fully functional and usable armored diving device JIM.
• 1971: Scubapro develops the first stabilizing jacket.
• 1974: the controversial director Leni Riefenstahl deceives a diving instructor, gives (at over seventy) a lower age and successfully learns to dive.
• 1992: Pressure chamber deep dive at 701 meters by the French company COMEX.

Start of diving and founding of associations

• In 1932 the popular US magazine Everyday Science and Mechanics published instructions for building a hose-supplied diving helmet from tin canisters for private use.
• 1930s : The first group is formed in Germany who dives in the Rhine with self-made “canister diving helmets”.
• 1949: Founding of the first German diving association "Barakuda" (today International Aquanautic Club ).
• 1950s : The sport of diving moves more and more from free diving (holding your breath or apnea ) to scuba diving. The first civil diving centers open in the USA.
• 1952: The International Diving Educators Association (IDEA) is founded as part of the FSDA (Florida Skin Diver Association). It later became the Florida Scuba Divers Association. The FSDA was an amalgamation of many highly active diving clubs from Florida and has been the voice of divers since 1952. IDEA today is proud to have worked with the FSDA in the past.
• 1953: The BSAC ( British Sub Aqua Club ) is founded by Oscar Gugen and Peter Small in London. Peter Small died a few years later while attempting a deep dive at 1,000 feet.
• 1953: First courses in cave diving by the Florida Speleological Society.
• 1954: On April 1st, the first issue of the magazine "Delphin", the first German magazine for diving sports, appears. The VDST (Association of German Sports Divers) is founded on October 17th as the German umbrella organization for diving.
• 1955: The BSAC already has 1,100 members.
• 1955: Hans Hass coined the term safari in connection with diving when he offered diving trips in the Red Sea to finance his research vessel " Xarifa ". These early liveaboards heralded the beginning of diving tourism.
• 1956: The University of California introduces the first wetsuit, which is later mass-produced by Edco.
• 1956: Barakuda opens the first diving schools on the Mediterranean.
• 1958: Sherwood develops the first piston-operated regulator.
• 1959: The YMCA organizes the first civilian scuba diving course in the United States.
• 1959: The Underwater Society of America is founded.
• 1959: On January 9th, delegates from the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, Brazil, France, Greece, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Malta, Monaco, Portugal, Switzerland, the USA and Yugoslavia set up the CMAS in Monaco after a previous meeting in Brussels ( Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques ) founded as a worldwide association of underwater activities.
• 1960: NAUI ( National Association of Underwater Instructors ) is founded in the USA by Al Tillman, Neal Hess, Garry Howland and John Jones.
• 1961: John Gaffney founds NASDS ( National Association of Scuba Diving Schools ) in the USA .
• 1963: Dick Bonin and Gustav dalla Valle found Scubapro .
• 1966: PADI ( Professional Association of Diving Instructors ) is founded in the USA.
• 1967: The TSVÖ ( Austrian diving association ) is founded in Pörtschach / Carinthia. In the founding year nine associations with 500 members are represented.
• 1967: PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) trains 3,226 divers in its first year of existence.
• 1968: The NACD (National Association For Cave Diving) is founded as the first cave diving organization in Florida.
• 1970: Scuba Schools International (SSI) is founded in the USA by Bob Clark. Bob Clark was previously an instructor / trainer at YMCA before moving to NASDS in 1966.
• 1979: IDEA becomes its own diving association and in 1980 appears for the first time as an international member of the Diving Equipment Manufacturers Association (DEMA).
• 1980: Divers Alert Network (DAN) is founded at Duke University in North Carolina / USA.
• 1983: SSI opens its first office outside of the US (Southeast Asia), triggering the start of SSI's worldwide expansion.
• 1983: Founding of the NSS-CDS (National Speleological Society-Cave Diving Section) in Florida.
• 1985: The professional association of state-certified diving instructors e. V. (FST) is founded. This organization is created through the merger of the diving instructors certified by the UWL (underwater teaching institute) in Buchholz.
• 1986: The United States RSTC is founded. The majority of the US diving associations (IDEA, NASDS, PADI, PDIC and SSI) decide to establish a “not for profit” agency - known as the Recreational Scuba Training Council (RSTC). RSTC members train more than 85% of all divers worldwide.
• 1988: ANDI (American Nitrox Divers International) is founded in the USA.
• 1990s : Approximately 500,000 scuba divers are trained each year in the US alone.
• 1994: Technical Diving International (TDI) is founded
• 1999: SSI connects with NASDS (USA)
• 1999: The World Recreational Scuba Training Council (WRSTC) is founded to coordinate many recreational diving associations worldwide and Scuba Diving International (SDI) as a subsidiary of TDI.

Development of diving in the 21st century

• 2000: CMAS certifies around 200,000 divers per year worldwide and has around 3,000,000 members worldwide.
• 2000: PADI certifies around 950,000 divers per year worldwide. 100,000 professional members and 4,300 diving centers in 175 countries train according to PADI guidelines.
• 2000: Barakuda (now IAC ) have around 1,000 instructors and 140 diving centers around the world .
• 2000: SSI offers training in around 2,000 diving schools in around 80 countries worldwide.
• 2000: BSAC has around 45,000 members worldwide.
• 2001: The German diving associations VDST, Barakuda (IAC), IDA, VETL, VEST, VIT, UDI and FST jointly found CMAS Germany, in which around 6,000 diving instructors are now represented
• 2002: The TSVÖ has around 100 clubs with around 6,000 members.
• 2002: In the USA, 8.5 million people have a valid diving license, regardless of which organization they obtained it from.
• 2010: PADI names 5,800 dive centers and resorts ; the IAC has around 2,760 diving instructors and 120 diving centers worldwide.
• 2013: Around 1.7 million people were trained as scuba divers worldwide .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Larry "Harris" Taylor, Ph.D .: Diving With Gas Mixes Other Than Air. Retrieved August 11, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Larry "Harris" Taylor, Ph.D .: Diving With Gas Mixes Other Than Air. Retrieved August 11, 2016 . 
3. ^ John R. Kane: Max E. Nohl and the world record dive 1937 . In: SPUMS Journal (reprinted from Historical Diver 1996, 7, 14-19) . Vol. 28, No. 1 , March 1998, pp. 56-59 .
4. ↑ Michael Jung: Hans Hass Biography. RoBoT-Camera-Museum, accessed on August 21, 2013 . 
5. ↑ Padi.com: PADI History , PADI, (English)
6. ^ Diving , issue 3/2010, p. 102
7. ↑ 945,000 certifications (see Worldwide Corporate Statistics 2013 (PDF;. 232 kB) Data for 2007-2012 PADI February 2013 filed by the original on November 2, 2013 ; accessed on November 1, 2013 (English).  ) At a market share of 56% (see Greg: . 2013 market Share of Scuba Certification Agencies (PADI, NAUI, SSI) DiveBuddy.com, July 25, 2013, accessed November 1, 2013 . (English)  ), result in a market of about 1.7 million.