Aqualung

The invention:

A device that allows divers to descend hundreds of
meters below the surface of the ocean by enabling them to carry
the oxygen they breathe with them.

The people behind the invention:

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910-1997), a French navy officer,
undersea explorer, inventor, and author.

Émile Gagnan, a French engineer who invented an automatic
air-regulating device.

The Limitations of Early Diving

Undersea dives have been made since ancient times for the purposes
of spying, recovering lost treasures from wrecks, and obtaining
natural treasures (such as pearls). Many attempts have been made
since then to prolong the amount of time divers could remain underwater.
The first device, described by the Greek philosopher Aristotle
in 335 b.c.e., was probably the ancestor of the modern snorkel. It was
a bent reed placed in the mouth, with one end above the water.
In addition to depth limitations set by the length of the reed,
pressure considerations also presented a problem. The pressure on
a diver’s body increases by about one-half pound per square centimeter
for every meter ventured below the surface. After descending
about 0.9 meter, inhaling surface air through a snorkel becomes difficult
because the human chest muscles are no longer strong enough
to inflate the chest. In order to breathe at or below this depth, a diver
must breathe air that has been pressurized; moreover, that pressure
must be able to vary as the diver descends or ascends.
Few changes were possible in the technology of diving until air
compressors were invented during the early nineteenth century.
Fresh, pressurized air could then be supplied to divers. At first, the
divers who used this method had to wear diving suits, complete
with fishbowl-like helmets. This “tethered” diving made divers relatively
immobile but allowed them to search for sunken treasure or
do other complex jobs at great depths.

The Development of Scuba Diving

The invention of scuba gear gave divers more freedom to
move about and made them less dependent on heavy equipment.
(“Scuba” stands for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.)
Its development occurred in several stages. In 1880, Henry
Fleuss of England developed an outfit that used a belt containing
pure oxygen. Belt and diver were connected, and the diver breathed
the oxygen over and over. Aversion of this system was used by the
U.S. Navy in World War II spying efforts. Nevertheless, it had serious
drawbacks: Pure oxygen was toxic to divers at depths greater
than 9 meters, and divers could carry only enough oxygen for relatively
short dives. It did have an advantage for spies, namely, that
the oxygen—breathed over and over in a closed system—did not
reach the surface in the form of telltale bubbles.
The next stage of scuba development occurred with the design
of metal tanks that were able to hold highly compressed air.
This enabled divers to use air rather than the potentially toxic
pure oxygen. More important, being hooked up to a greater supply
of air meant that divers could stay under water longer. Initially,
the main problem with the system was that the air flowed continuously
through a mask that covered the diver’s entire face. This process
wasted air, and the scuba divers expelled a continual stream
of air bubbles that made spying difficult. The solution, according to
Axel Madsen’s Cousteau (1986), was “a valve that would allow inhaling
and exhaling through the same mouthpiece.”
Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s father was an executive for Air Liquide—
France’s main producer of industrial gases. He was able to direct
Cousteau to Émile Gagnan, an engineer at thecompany’s Paris laboratory
who had been developing an automatic gas shutoff valve for Air
Liquide. This valve became the Cousteau-Gagnan regulator, a breathing
device that fed air to the diver at just the right pressure whenever
he or she inhaled.With this valve—and funding from Air Liquide—Cousteau and
Gagnan set out to design what would become the Aqualung. The
first Aqualungs could be used at depths of up to 68.5 meters. During
testing, however, the dangers of Aqualung diving became apparent.
For example, unless divers ascended and descended in slow stages,
it was likely that they would get “the bends” (decompression sickness),
the feared disease of earlier, tethered deep-sea divers. Another
problem was that, below 42.6 meters, divers encountered nitrogen
narcosis. (This can lead to impaired judgment that may cause
fatal actions, including removing a mouthpiece or developing an
overpowering desire to continue diving downward, to dangerous
depths.)Cousteau believed that the Aqualung had tremendous military
potential. DuringWorldWar II, he traveled to London soon after the
Normandy invasion, hoping to persuade the Allied Powers of its
usefulness. He was not successful. So Cousteau returned to Paris
and convinced France’s new government to use Aqualungs to locate
and neutralize underwater mines laid along the French coast by
the German navy. Cousteau was commissioned to combine minesweeping
with the study of the physiology of scuba diving. Further
research revealed that the use of helium-oxygen mixtures increased
to 76 meters the depth to which a scuba diver could go without suffering
nitrogen narcosis.

Impact

One way to describe the effects of the development of the Aqualung
is to summarize Cousteau’s continued efforts to the present. In
1946, he and Philippe Tailliez established the Undersea Research
Group of Toulon to study diving techniques and various aspects of
life in the oceans. They studied marine life in the Red Sea from 1951
to 1952. From 1952 to 1956, they engaged in an expedition supported
by the National Geographic Society. By that time, the Research
Group had developed many techniques that enabled them to
identify life-forms and conditions at great depths.
Throughout their undersea studies, Cousteau and his coworkers
continued to develop better techniques for scuba diving, for recording
observations by means of still and television photography, and
for collecting plant and animal specimens. In addition, Cousteau
participated (with Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard) in the construction
of the deep-submergence research vehicle, or bathyscaphe. In
the 1960’s, he directed a program called Conshelf, which tested a
human’s ability to live in a specially built underwater habitat. He
also wrote and produced films on underwater exploration that attracted,
entertained, and educated millions of people.
Cousteau has won numerous medals and scientific distinctions.
These include the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society
(1963), the United Nations International Environment Prize (1977),
membership in the American and Indian academies of science (1968
and 1978, respectively), and honorary doctor of science degrees
from the University of California, Berkeley (1970), Harvard University
(1979), and Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute (1979).