Back issues of Historical Diving Societies' journals

[trapezus]

David Wilson, thank you for interest. This week I bought a lot of old issues diving magazines 25 pieces from old book dealer. (1 issue 1 Dollar). Sometimes can find Skin Diver too. I have many Mondo Sommerso magazines properly bound between 1970-1980.
This party are Diver and Scuba Diving magazines 90th years.. Reading old magazines or even just very pleasant to look at pictures.
Unfortunately ,they losted to the internet.
From USA to buy an old magazine very expensive but real expensive shipping. 25 Dollars for 1 issue any magazine shipping to my country or any Europen.
I find it very valuable books but shipping 3-4 times expensive. However even so I have a good books for diving and especially underwater archelogy.

 

[David Wilson]

Thanks for your interest, Trapezus. I know what you mean about expensive mail charges with transatlantic purchases on eBay and elsewhere. Over the Christmas period international snailmail has been particularly slow too.

I only purchase old diving magazines if I'm sure what they contain is exactly what I'm looking for, to inform my historical diving equipment research. One example is my copy of the November 1956 edition of Skin Diver, which I found on eBay and bought from the USA because it was a theme issue dedicated to exposure suits. It was worth the expense because of its relevance to my studies.

That doesn't mean, however, that I want to compile a complete collection of, say, every Skin Diver magazine from 1951 onwards, because many of them are unlikely to contribute anything relevant to my research.

I guess what I am saying is that it's a shame that there don't even seem to be any online indexes to diving magazine articles. If there were, it would be much easier to identify which magazine issues might be worth getting hold of. Front covers of diving magazines don't really interest me on their own.

 

[trapezus]

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[David Wilson]

Another find to report: a complete run of the Russian journal Спортсмен-Подводник [transliterated as "Sportsmen-Podvodnik" and translated as "Underwater Sportsman"). Here is the front and inside cover of the first issue:

There are scans of every issue of the journal between 1962 and 1991, documenting Soviet diving across the sixties, seventies and eighties. These PDFs are free to download from: http://www.scubadiving.ru/biblioteka/Knigi/sportsmen_podvodnik.htm.

My knowledge of Russian comes from a year of evening classes in the mid-1960s and one two-week visit to Moscow and what was then Leningrad during the 1970s. I've been able to benefit from the content of the articles by copying and pasting text into Google Translate and correcting any gobbledegook using Wiktionary to determine what meaning any verb, noun and adjective endings have.

The articles often come with illustrations, most of them line drawings. They cover every possible topic, from equipment to training. There are 92 issues to download in all and the files are manageable in size. It's brilliant that such a wealth of information is freely available like this.

 

[trapezus]

 

[trapezus]

David Wilson , Thanks for starting this thread.

 

[David Wilson]

A pleasure, Trapezus. I'll be posting more references to free diving magazine back issues when I chance on any more. At the moment, I'm focusing on the contents of the Russian periodical Спортсмен-Подводник because several articles in it provide illuminating insights into the history of recreational diving in the Soviet Union during the 1960s. There was a surprisingly large range of basic gear being made back then in several different factories in Leningrad (now St Petersburg), Moscow, Yaroslavl and Kiev (capital of Ukraine) and there was a degree of negative criticism about some articles of Soviet equipment I hadn't expected to read.

 

[trapezus]

Russians had renewed their equipments for example valve ,manifolt systems. Now modern DIN regulator can be use.However still there are more can be done.

 

[trapezus]

Naturalia n°46 - 1957 - Numéro Spécial L'Exploration Sous-Marine - La Plongée -

 

[trapezus]