You might want to do a bit more research on this. NASA started in 1958, but 130 ft was commonly used long before that. Your article says the Navy limited itself to 130 ft in the 1950s, but they were late to the table.I believe the 130 ft/40m NDL was made using doppler research with NASA - taking into account the partial pressure of oxygen and nitrogen.
Dive Risk Factors, Gas Bubble Formation, and Decompression Illness in Recreational SCUBA Diving: Analysis of DAN Europe DSL Data Base interesting article about DCS
Historical Perspectives on Dive Tables and Decompression Models – Divers' Blogs good info and links out to more research and history of development of NDL
The 130 ft limit is not really related to NDL, which is a time limit, not a depth limit. the depth limit was more related to gas supply in the tanks commonly used, and especially to narcosis.
PPO2 of air at 130 ft (5 ATA) is 1.05 ATA, which is a non-issue.
PPN2 of air at 130 ft is bout 4 ATM, which is beginning to be serious.
The Diviac blog post has some errors, and is mostly about NDL, not depth limits.
NASA's current research is very much about DCS (ascending too quickly from 1 ATA of 0 ATA) but not to nitrogen narcosis, which is pretty much non-existent at such low pressures. Their O2 toxicity work is more about pulmonary than CNS toxicity, again because of the low pressures but long exposures.