History of Underwater Technology 1531 - 2003

1531
Guglielmo de Loreno dives on two of Caligula's sunken galleys using a diving bell from a design by Leonardo da Vinci.
1578
William Borne designed the first submarine device but it never left the drawing board. His design was based on the principle of ballast tanks, the same principles are still in use by today's submarines.
1620
Cornelis Drebbel, a Dutchman, designed and built an oared submersible. Drebbels' submarine design was the first to address the problem of air exchange while submerged.
1650
Von Guericke developed the first effective air pump.
1667
Robert Boyle observed a gas bubble in the eye of viper that had been compressed and then decompressed. This was the first recorded observation of decompression sickness or "the bends."
1691
Edmund Halley patented a diving bell which was connected by a pipe to weighted barrels of air that could be replenished from the surface.
1715
John Lethbridge built a "diving engine", an underwater oak cylinder that was surface-supplied with compressed air. Water was kept out of the suit by means of greased leather cuffs, which sealed around the operator's arms.
1772
Sieur Freminet builds the first scuba device, but dies from lack of oxygen after 20 minutes.
1776
David Bushnell builds the one-man human powered Turtle submarine. The Colonial Army attempted to sink the British warship HMS Eagle with the Turtle, although unsuccessfully. The Turtle is the first submarine to dive, surface and be used in Naval combat. David Bushnell’s Turtle was the first American submarine. Built in 1775, its intended purpose was to break the British naval blockade of New York harbour during the American Revolution. With slight positive buoyancy, Turtle normally floated with approximately six inches of exposed surface. Turtle was powered by a hand-driven propeller. The operator would submerge under the target, and using a screw projecting from the top of Turtle, he would attach a clock-detonated explosive charge.
1788
John Smeaton refined the diving bell.
1798
Robert Fulton, commissioned by Napoleon. builds the submarine Nautilus which incorporates two forms of power for propulsion - a sail while on the surface and a hand-cranked screw while submerged.

1807
Fulton developed the first commercially successful steamboat. The name of Fulton's first steamboat is often given as the Clermont. In fact, he never called it by that name, generally referring to it simply as the North River Steamboat, but the name often appears in the literature. The Clermont left New York City for Albany, New York on the Hudson River on August 17, 1807, inaugurating the first commercial steamboat service in the world. Robert Fulton is buried in Old Trinity Churchyard, New York City.
1809
Fulton patented his design for a steamboat on February 11, 1809.
1819
Augustus Siebe invents a diving suit which receives air pumped down from the surface
1823
Charles Anthony Deane patented a "smoke helmet" for fire fighters. This helmet was used for diving, too. The helmet fitted over the head and was held on with weights. Air was supplied from the surface.
1825
William H. James designs a self contained diving suit that had compressed air in a iron container worn around the waist.
1828
Charles Deane and his brother John marketed the helmet with a "diving suit." The suit was not attached to the helmet, but secured with straps.
1837
Augustus Siebe sealed the Deane brothers' diving helmet to a watertight, air-containing rubber suit.
1839
Seibe's diving suit was used during the salvage of the British warship HMS Royal George. The improved suit was adopted as the standard diving dress by the Royal Engineers.
1843
The first diving school was established by the Royal Navy.
1865
Benoit Rouquayrol and Auguste Denayrouse patented an apparatus for underwater breathing. It consisted of a horizontal steel tank of compressed air on a diver's back, connected to a valve arranged to a mouth-piece. With this apparatus the diver was tethered to the surface by a hose that pumped fresh air into the low pressure tank, but he was able to disconnect the tether and dive with just the tank on his back for a few minutes.
1876
Henry A. Fleuss developed the first workable, self-contained diving rig that used compressed oxygen.
1878
Paul Bert published "La Pression Barometrique," a book length work containing his physiologic studies of pressure changes.
1895
John P. Holland introduces the Holland VII and later the Holland VIII (1900). The Holland VIII with its petroleum engine for surface propulsion and electric engine for submerged operations served as the blueprint adopted by all the world's navies for submarine design up to 1914.
1904
The French submarine Aigette is the first submarine built with a diesel engine for surface propulsion and electric engine for submerged operations. (Diesel fuel is less volatile than petroleum and is the preferred fuel for current and future conventionally powered submarine designs.)
1908
John Scott Haldane, Arthur E. Boycott and Guybon C. Damant, published "The Prevention of Compressed-Air Illness," a paper on decompression sickness.
1912
The U.S. Navy tested tables published by Haldane, Boycott and Damant.
1917
The U.S. Bureau of Construction & Repair introduced the Mark V Diving Helmet. It was used for most salvage work during World War II. The Mark V Diving Helmet became the standard U.S. Navy Diving equipment.
1924
First helium-oxygen experimental dives were conducted by U.S. Navy and Bureau of Mines.
1930
William Beebe descended 1,426 feet in a bathysphere attached to a barge by a steel cable to the mother ship.
1930
Guy Gilpatric pioneered the use of rubber goggles with glass lenses for skin diving. By the mid-1930s, face masks, fins, and snorkels were in common use.
1933
Fins were patented by Louis de Corlieu.
1933
Yves Le Prieur modified the Rouquayrol-Denayrouse invention by combining a demand valve with a high pressure air tank to give the diver complete freedom from hoses and lines.
1934
William Beebe and Otis Barton descended 3,028 feet in a bathysphere.

1941-1944
During World War II, Italian divers used closed circuit scuba equipment to place explosives under British naval and merchant marine ships.
1942-43
Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emile Gagnan redesigned a car regulator that would automatically provide compressed air to a diver on his slightest intake of breath. The Aqua Lung was born.
1943
The German U-boat U-264 is equipped with a snorkel mast. This mast which provides air to the diesel engine allows the submarine to operate the engine at a shallow depth and recharge the batteries.
1943
Gagnan invents the regulator and Jacques-Yves Cousteau makes the first scuba dive with a compressed-air aqualung
1944
The German U-791 uses Hydrogen Peroxide as an alternative fuel source.
1946
Cousteau's Aqua Lung was marketed commercially in France. (Great Britain 1950, Canada 1951, USA 1952).
1947
Dumas made a record dive with the Aqua Lung to 307 feet in the Mediterranean Sea.
1948
Auguste Piccard sends the first bathyscape, FNRS-2, on unmanned dives
1948
Otis Barton descended in a modified bathysphere to a depth of 4500 feet, off the coast of California.
1950s
August Picard with son Jacques pioneered a new type of vessel called the bathyscaphe. It was completely self-contained and designed to go deeper than any bathysphere.
1951
The first issue of "Skin Diver Magazine" appeared in December.
1953
"The Silent World" by Cousteau was published chronicling the development of the Cousteau-Gagnan Aqua Lung.
1954
Georges S. Houot and Pierre-Henri Willm used a bathyscaphe to exceed Barton's 1948 diving record, reaching a depth of 13,287 feet.
1954
The U.S. launches the USS Nautilus - the world's first nuclear powered submarine. Nuclear power enables submarines to become true "submersibles" - able to operate underwater for an indefinite period of time. The development of the Naval nuclear propulsion plant was the work of a team Navy, government and contractor engineers led by Captain Hyman G. Rickover
1954
First manned dives in FNRS-2
1956
First wetsuit was introduced
1958
USS Nautilus completes the first ever voyage under the polar ice to the North Pole and back
1958
The U.S. introduces the USS Albacore with a "tear drop" hull design to reduce underwater resistance and allow greater submerged speed and manoeuvrability. The first submarine class to use this new hull design is the USS Skipjack.
Photo: USS Skipjack (SSN 585)
1958
The first segment of Sea Hunt aired on television, starring Lloyd Bridges as Mike Hunt, underwater adventurer.
1959
The USS George Washington is the world's first nuclear powered ballistic missile firing submarine.
USS George Washington (SSBN 598)

1960
Jacques Piccard and Lieutenant Don Walsh, USN, descend 35,820 feet to the deepest known point in the ocean in the bathyscape Trieste
1960
USS Triton completes the first ever underwater circumnavigation
1960
NAUI was formed.
1962
Beginning in 1962 several experiments were conducted whereby people lived in underwater habitats.
1966
PADI was formed.
1968
John J. Gruener and R. Neal Watson dove to 437 feet breathing compressed air.
1970s
Important advances relating to scuba safety that began in the 1960s became widely implemented in the 1970s, such as certification cards to indicate a minimum level of training, change from J-valve reserve systems to non-reserve K valves, and adoption of the BC and single hose regulators as essential pieces of diving equipment.

1980
Divers Alert Network was founded at Duke University as a non-profit organization to promote safe diving.
1981
Record 2250 foot-dive was made in a Duke Medical Centre chamber.
1983
The Orca Edge, the first commercially available dive computer, was introduced.
1985
The wreck of the Titanic was found.
1990s
An estimated 500,000 new scuba divers are certified yearly in the U.S., new scuba magazines form and scuba travel is big business. There is an increase of diving by non-professionals who use advanced technology, including mixed gases, full face masks, underwater voice communication, propulsion systems, and so on.
May 2002
The FBI issued a nationwide alert saying that it has received information about a possible terrorist threat from underwater divers. The threat was serious enough for the agency to contact several scuba shops, seeking information about students and customers.
November 2002
"Skin Diver" magazine ceased publication.
July 2003
John Cronin, co-founder of PADI, died.
July 2003
Tanya Streeter, a world champion free diver, broke both the men's and women's variable ballast free diving world records. She descended 400 feet (122 meters) to capture the variable ballast record and become the first person to ever break all four deep free diving world records.

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