The constant experience of fishing an gathering of ornaments, that are valued according to their characteristics, rareness and extraction difficulty, allowed the familiarization with the water bodies and gave way to the use of wit to be able to submerge, to pass unnoticed and to perform military strategies. From a bamboo stick to hide underwater, the inventions became more and more complex, until the design of an underwater bell to submerge and the first diving suits were created.
Depicts a 1720 illustration. Hydroandric machine or clothes used to cover underwater. Archivo General de Indias, Ingenios and samples, 248.
It is interesting how this fights between several societies motivated men to conquer the fear of such a different element. Mastering water was a need, as it was considered as a strategic mean of transportation for war. There are registers of remote times, as remote as those of Ancient Greece, where they narrate how they would use wineskin leather filled with air to submerge and damage the enemy ships, drilling their hull or cutting loose the ropes of the ship so that they would go adrift and crash.
Besides this inventiveness, the observation of nature gave them inspiration to find the way to breathe underwater. The reeds and rushes were used as breathing tubes, the predecessor to what we know today as a snorkel. But challenging the depths led some of the inventors to search for a way to provide air for longer periods of time, as some of the activities, such as the research for submerged underwater secrets or the recuperation of sunken ship remains, required so.
The diving bells were the first solution to be able to obtain an air deposit underwater that would allow the diver to perform an activity for a determined time period. But that invention had two main drawbacks: the air contained in the bell would be scarce and made breathing difficult; you would also run the risk of losing the device´s stability, sinking from within the bell's insides and putting the diver's life in danger.
1583. Drawing of a diving bell invented by José Bon. The inventor assured it gave men the possibility to stay for more than 15 minutes under water. It consisted in a bronze bell with four rows of vertically placed anchorage that was evenly apart from the holding ends that allowed it coming up or down when circulating. Archivo General de Indias, M.P. Ingenios and samples, 5.
The materials and working systems of the bells were modified from the heavy oak ones covered with led to the ones made of a steel sheet, going through those one-piece melted in bronze or melted iron. When made out of wood, they would hinder movement by adding extra weight with led ingots, stones or sand bags to make them sink and stay perpendicular to the water surface.
As time went by and the acquired experience in immersions, the idea evolved until it found a solution for the air supply coming from the surface by means of pumps or compressors. This change increased the immersion time.
The technological impediments were not an obstacle for the conquest of depths. The underwater experience, the animals they observed, the perspective of building decks and bridges, on top of the possibility to recuperate sunken ships, were enough motivation to keep designing and improving inventions to increase the underwater staying –time, working with less effort and more safety.
At the end of the 16th Century, Jerónimo de Ayanz presented a series of inventions to undertake underwater work for the Spanish authorities. The designs of his inventions were outstanding as they were almost four centuries ahead of diving and underwater navigation technical developments that would follow. Amongst its designs, he suggested two versions of a breathing tube with a purging valve made out of a goat skin's hide filled with air and with a tube and a breathing entrance, a concept that would allow the diver to move around underwater when swimming; with a diving mask; a vest with air supply coming from the surface, as well as of a submarine wooden craft with paddles to move forward underwater. As a result, the king Philip the Third, in 1605, granted him with a 20 year patent.
Jeronimo de Ayanz's inventions' illustrations.
Experiments were undertaken for three centuries with immersion machines. In some cases, depths of nearly 40 meters were reached and an underwater stay of around three to four hours was accomplished. Nevertheless, the design of these rudimentary diving suits was kept secret by their inventors so as to retain for themselves the benefits of technology. Not sharing the characteristics of their inventions gave as a result a certain delay in the solving of difficulties that diving presented, such as decompression problems.
For most of the 18th Century, work was made to improve and perfect the suit for diving, which gave way, in the first years of the following century, to the birth of the diving suit. For a couple of decades, experiments were done regarding the difficulties the diver would encounter when using an open helmet, as sudden movements would get it to flood, until the use of new materials allowed the transition to the design of a closed suit, a success, through which we had finally achieved a waterproof or watertight suit, and that gave way to the modern history of diving.
In 1819, the British engineer Augustus Siebe, presented the first suit and helmet invention. It consisted of a metal diving suit fitted to a mid-length watertight canvas, so as to the air sent by a pump would come out from underneath the canvas. The inconveniency was that if the diver was to bend too much during his work, the device would fully fill with water. 18 years later, the same inventor managed to perfection its equipment by transforming it into a full-length closed suit.
Augustus Siebe's Diving Suit.
First Diver´s Manual
In 1836, the English brothers Juan and Carlos Deane, actively dedicated to rescue operations, published a Diver's Manual were they captured their experiences. This was the first time that a document of this sort was edited in the World.
Nevertheless, the diver needed a mayor movement range and also a system where he could carry his own air so as to breathe without depending of the surface. All through the 19th Century research was made on finding a way to give the divers an autonomous and automatic, submarine breathing device, an achievement that was reached until the first decades of the following century, mainly by the French.
The earliest reference of a propelling system for the feet is found in the Codex Atlanticus (1500) by Leonardo Da Vinci and it consists in the athletes drafts. A century later, the physician Giovanni Alfonso Borelli analyzed the anatomic mechanics of animals and adapted some sort of membranes that resembled those of a frog's legs to a fitted swimming costume. Nevertheless, it wasn't until 1924, with the invention of the Frenchman, Louis de Corlieu, that the authentic vulcanized rubber flippers were made, the same ones that appeared for the first time in the market in 1935.
The success and technological improvements in the use of compressed air, allowed, in the 40´s, to culminate with the contribution of the revolutionary invention of two Frenchmen: Jacques Yves Cousteau, at that time he was lieutenant in a ship for the French Navy, and Emile Gagnan, an engineer with an expertise in industrial gas equipments. They both managed to design an automatic mechanism that would supply air to the diver and would be known as Aqua-lung; the new regulator added to several bottles with enough stored air and flippers that allowed the man to easily go deep in the mysterious world of depths.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910-1997) was a French Navy official that stood out for his passion for the ocean and its mysteries. Together with Emile Gagnan, he invented the autonomous diving system known as "Aqua-lung" that allowed diving to become popular to the point it is now considered a Sport.
From this point onwards, the immersion equipment has become more perfect to allow more movement, safety to the diver and complete autonomy form the surface, and even to achieve a descent to larger depths. The whole diving equipment is currently known as SCUBA that stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, i.e., autonomous diving equipment.