David Wilson
Contributor
Easter Monday is a public holiday in the UK and I thought I'd use some of it to launch a new thread about the diving equipment manufacturers who were in business in my home country during the period between the late forties and the mid seventies. The first specimen to go under the microscope is a British company now known as Typhoon International, whose website can be found at Typhoon International - Home. Its "About Us" page reduces the early history of the enterprise to a couple of sentences: "Typhoon was founded 70 years ago by Oscar Gugen. After the second world war Oscar came to England and started up E.T. Skinner and also a club for divers which became the British Sub Aqua Club, this grew to become the largest diving club in the world."
The role of Oscar Gugen (above) in the creation of the BSAC will be further examined in a forthcoming thread in the SB "History of Scuba Diving: Tales from the Abyss" forum. According to his Wikipedia article at Oscar Gugen - Wikipedia, "He was born in 1910 of an Austrian father and French mother. He started as a hotel kitchen hand in Austria, peeling carrots. By the age of 21 he was a hotel director in the south of France. When World War II started, he joined the French Army. After the Germans broke through into France, he destroyed his papers and reached and boarded the last British destroyer which was evacuating British troops. As he had no papers, he was interned on the Isle of Man, and released at the end of the war. He became a swimming pool attendant, and then managed an American Army Officers' Club. After those Americans left, he became a partner of Eric Skinner, who was selling jigsaw puzzles. He imported swimming goggles and swimfins from France, as the Dunlop Rubber company, who had made wartime frogmen's fins, had decided that there would be no market for them in peace time. Soon Oscar was selling 300 pairs of fins a week, mainly to Gamages (a long-gone but successful London department store and mail-order business) and to Colin McLeod at Lillywhites (London's premier sporting goods store)."
E. T. Skinner and Company Ltd., which began trading in 1948, operated from 400 Harrow Road, London W. 9 in the early 1950s, before moving during 1955 to 2 Lochaline Street in Hammersmith, London W. 6. Here is one of the firm's advertisements from 1954:
E. T. Skinner & Co. branded its output as "Typhoon" products using the logo illustrated above. As far as I am aware, the company issued two catalogues, dated 1956 and 1966, during its first twenty years in business. They can be found online at https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bw7z_4bLjOOEcmt6eVBRbjBBMU0 and at https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bw7z_4bLjOOEZVpYY3c0cUhOdFE respectively. Both catalogues were entitled "Skinner's handbook for skin divers" (pun probably intended!), containing as they did not only descriptions of the underwater swimming equipment on sale but also advice about how it should be used in the pool and in open water.
I'll pause there. My next posting will provide a closer look at the fins illustrated in the 1954 ad.
The role of Oscar Gugen (above) in the creation of the BSAC will be further examined in a forthcoming thread in the SB "History of Scuba Diving: Tales from the Abyss" forum. According to his Wikipedia article at Oscar Gugen - Wikipedia, "He was born in 1910 of an Austrian father and French mother. He started as a hotel kitchen hand in Austria, peeling carrots. By the age of 21 he was a hotel director in the south of France. When World War II started, he joined the French Army. After the Germans broke through into France, he destroyed his papers and reached and boarded the last British destroyer which was evacuating British troops. As he had no papers, he was interned on the Isle of Man, and released at the end of the war. He became a swimming pool attendant, and then managed an American Army Officers' Club. After those Americans left, he became a partner of Eric Skinner, who was selling jigsaw puzzles. He imported swimming goggles and swimfins from France, as the Dunlop Rubber company, who had made wartime frogmen's fins, had decided that there would be no market for them in peace time. Soon Oscar was selling 300 pairs of fins a week, mainly to Gamages (a long-gone but successful London department store and mail-order business) and to Colin McLeod at Lillywhites (London's premier sporting goods store)."
E. T. Skinner and Company Ltd., which began trading in 1948, operated from 400 Harrow Road, London W. 9 in the early 1950s, before moving during 1955 to 2 Lochaline Street in Hammersmith, London W. 6. Here is one of the firm's advertisements from 1954:
E. T. Skinner & Co. branded its output as "Typhoon" products using the logo illustrated above. As far as I am aware, the company issued two catalogues, dated 1956 and 1966, during its first twenty years in business. They can be found online at https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bw7z_4bLjOOEcmt6eVBRbjBBMU0 and at https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bw7z_4bLjOOEZVpYY3c0cUhOdFE respectively. Both catalogues were entitled "Skinner's handbook for skin divers" (pun probably intended!), containing as they did not only descriptions of the underwater swimming equipment on sale but also advice about how it should be used in the pool and in open water.
I'll pause there. My next posting will provide a closer look at the fins illustrated in the 1954 ad.
