The Development of Scuba Diving

One of the most loved water sporting activities, scuba diving has a long and very interesting history that spans numerous civilizations and many long years. In the earliest stages it involved doing dives in which one had to hold one’s breath for as long as was possible. Also referred to as free diving, scuba diving has been known to man from the ancient times and was used by many civilizations as a means to spear fish and to also compete among the locals. It was the Greeks who were often called free divers as they used diving to hunt for things such as sponges as well as used it as a part of their military preparations.

Hollowed Out Reeds

The early civilizations actually began what is today known as scuba diving by using snorkels that were constructed of hollowed out reeds and they also made use of bags filled with air as diving bells. However, the efficiency of such methods was questionable and obviously they are far removed in their design to what modern scuba divers use today. For one, when using reeds, divers were not able to dive to any great depths while the air bags soon became full of carbon monoxide and thus were less than trustworthy, and finally there was noticeable lack of mobility when using diving bells.

All that of course changed after diving suits began to be used by the French and English scuba divers who wore leather apparel into which air could be pumped from above with the help of manually operated pumps. After that, scuba diving was never the same and further changes took place in the form of helmets that enabled scuba divers to withstand greater pressure since air could be manually pumped into the helmets and thus it allowed divers to go even deeper down into the waters, which obviously promoted scuba diving a step further.

The nineteenth century saw still more improvements to scuba diving equipment and it was then that a Frenchman named Paul Bert and a Scot named John Scott made some discoveries as a result of their research efforts on how to deal with water pressure and to make diving with compressed air a lot more safe. Thus, equipment such as regulators, air pumps and a few other useful items of equipment began to be used that further changed the face of scuba diving.

The twentieth century saw many more new inventions taking place that took scuba diving equipment to new levels of efficiency and it soon became commonplace for divers to use swim fins and masks as well as other gear that made the whole sport of scuba diving much more interesting and challenging. During the 1950’s all these efforts bore fruit when scuba diving became a very popular sport and there were many new stores selling scuba gear coming up that helped to further promote the sport. Scuba diving even began to be shown in movies and has become a very popular sport.