Check this vintage ad out...

[Bob DBF]

Speaking about vintage, I got up early and caught an episode of Highway Patrol. Unimportant other than they had a diver in the story. Old 72, double hose, weight belt, and I only noticed a depth gauge. The scene was ltaking place on a SoCal beach.

The crooks, disguised like fishermen, were going to make a getaway on a boat off the beach. The diver was trying to be helpful when one of them knocked him out from behind. As they made the getaway, one of the crooks comments "doesn't he know it's dangerous to go diveing alone".

When Brodreck Crawford interviews the diver, he refers to it as ,Skin Diving a couple of times I haven't heard that since I was a kid.

The old early '50's Buick patrol cars took me back as well.

 

[Angelo Farina]

To my knowledge, the first training program started at the Scripps institute in 1951, as a response to the Berkeley death. The Scripps people made up the training as they went. They first had to figure out how to dive themselves, and then they had to figure out how to teach it. Apparently many of the safety skills included were not so much in response to actual accidents but rather to what, in their imagination, might happen on a dive.

If you are interested, here is where I got that:
https://tos.org/oceanography/assets/docs/16-3_hanauer.pdf

Actually here in Italy regular "touristic" diving courses were already being done since some years. The first was organized by the Italian Touring Club, and sponsored by Cressi, which provided the equipment. The course was done at Marina di Campo on the Elba Island, in summer 1948. It was repeated the following years at Ischia island (1949) and Tremiti Islands (1950). The Instructor was Luigi Ferraro (the inventor of Rondine fins, Pinocchio mask, Inject regulator, double-hose ARO, etc.). At the time Ferraro was working at Cressi, before starting his own company Technisub.
More info here: Underwater Tourism | Luigi Ferraro
If you look at this web page, you will see a photo showing that the equipment employed was not an air tank, but a pure-oxygen rebreather.

This remained the basic diving training method here in Italy for decades.
When I made my first diving course, in 1975, the training was done mostly with the CC rebreather (Cressi ARO mod. 57B), and with exercises, skills and evaluation methods which were yet basically the same set by Ferraro in 1948.

 

[Open Ocean Diver]

Actually here in Italy regular "touristic" diving courses were already being done since some years. The first was organized by the Italian Touring Club, and sponsored by Cressi, which provided the equipment. The course was done at Marina di Campo on the Elba Island, in summer 1948. It was repeated the following years at Ischia island (1949) and Tremiti Islands (1950). The Instructor was Luigi Ferraro (the inventor of Rondine fins, Pinocchio mask, Inject regulator, double-hose ARO, etc.). At the time Ferraro was working at Cressi, before starting his own company Technisub.
More info here: Underwater Tourism | Luigi Ferraro
If you look at this web page, you will see a photo showing that the equipment employed was not an air tank, but a pure-oxygen rebreather.
View attachment 627067
This remained the basic diving training method here in Italy for decades.
When I made my first diving course, in 1975, the training was done mostly with the CC rebreather (Cressi ARO mod. 57B), and with exercises, skills and evaluation methods which were yet basically the same set by Ferraro in 1948.

Thanks for the history... love the fact from the very beginning this was an all gender sport.

 

[Angelo Farina]

Thanks for the history... love the fact from the very beginning this was an all gender sport.

Of course touristic training was "all gender".
Diving had never been a "male thing" here, female divers always existed since the very beginning.
Ferraro's wife, Orietta, was a swim champion, and it was SHE who introduced him to free diving.
She was trained together male navy soldiers in the Gamma group (now COMSUBIN), and she was scheduled for missions in Asia Minor together with her husband.
Then she was impeded to leave and to join her husband in Tripoli, so she actually did never sink any ship. His husband instead was relocated in Turkey, where he was successfull in mining and sinking half a dozen of ships. Actually, Ferraro alone did sink more ships than any other Italian vessel during WW2.
Here more info on Orietta:
Orietta, his wife | Luigi Ferraro

 

[Angelo Farina]

Thanks for the history... love the fact from the very beginning this was an all gender sport.

And not only in Italy, of course.
The two most famous pioneers of underwater exploration, way before than J.J. Cousteau, were Lotte and Hans Haas (Austria):

Most people were captured by their films mostly for her beauty and incredible elegance, Lotte did move really like a siren underwater.
When I compare her trim and kicking style to what I see today done by so-called tech divers, I think that we went the wrong direction...

 

[Bigbella]

And not only in Italy, of course.
The two most famous pioneers of underwater exploration, way before than J.J. Cousteau, were Lotte and Hans Haas (Austria):

Most people were captured by their films mostly for her beauty and incredible elegance, Lotte did move really like a siren underwater.
When I compare her trim and kicking style to what I see today done by so-called tech divers, I think that we went the wrong direction...

I recall Hans Hass and still have his guide to the Red Sea, Im Roten Meer, from the 1980s and Wir kommen aus den Meer, from far earlier . . .

 

[Angelo Farina]

I recall Hans Hass and still have his guide to the Red Sea, Im Roten Meer, from the 1980s and Wir kommen aus den Meer, from far earlier . . .

So you will like their film "Diving in the red sea"
This film is a milestone, and Hans Haas was the pioneer of underwater bioacoustics.
In this film you can see his experiments with hydrophones, capturing the very first underwater soundscapes and fish calls.
Furthermore, towards the end, you can also see the unsuccesfull experiment of playing music underwater for triggering reactions from fishes (with no reaction, indeed). Both methods are currently at the center of my research work, so you can understand why I am so interested in Hans' pioneeristic work.
Lotte was a great diver and a natural actress. Hans instead was a first class scientist, the first marine biologist to understand the importance of underwater sound for marine life.

Back on topic, about vintage scuba equipment.
In this film you see the pure oxygen CC rebreathers they were using. The counter lung was back mounted and the double hose avoided the hypercapnia problem of Italian single hose military rebreathers.
Hass convinced an engineer working at Draeger to modify their rescue rebreather for being used as a scuba system, specifically for this expedition in the red sea.
The result was a compact device providing one hour of oxygen and very minimal drag, allowing Lotte and friends to swim very quickly and to penetrate wrecks and caverns.
They were diving much deeper than the recommended max depth of 6 meters recommended for pure oxygen.
The trick was that they started filling the counterlung with air and then swimming quickly below 10m. This way they could reach depths of 20-25m.
This was not without risks, indeed. Passing out due to hypoxia was frequent, and also getting hyperoxia and start having convulsions.
At the end of the film Lotte has one of these passing outs, she acts very realistically for the simple reason that she was replicating for the camera the incident really occurred her a few days earlier...
The Hans and Lotte films made these CC rebreathers very popular at the time: for most scuba pioneers THAT was the equipment for breathing underwater, not those bulky and noisy compressed air large tanks.
Hans Hasse reported that before the expedition he also evaluated the usage of open circuit systems, but he discarded them for the noise caused by the bubbles: he wanted to record the environmental underwater sound and to study the reaction of fishes to artificial sound, so he preferred the silent CC rebreathers.
On the other side, Aqualung was promoting their compressed air scuba systems claiming to avoid all the problems and dangers of CC rebreathers: no aggressive chemicals in the scrubber, no risk of hypoxia, hyperoxia or hypercapnia, no maintainance, etc.

 

[Open Ocean Diver]

Watched the whole video... thanks for the narration it really helps since I don’t speak Italian. Lol

Very cool research. I found it interesting with the rebreather‘s they were using without any ballast yet trim was almost perfect. Where have we gone wrong with open circuit compressed air on our backs?

 

[Open Ocean Diver]

Christmas ad from Mel Fisher's Mel's Aqua Shop in the December 1956 Skin Diver Magazine "Lung Divers"

 

[lowwall]

How long until basic scuba training is back to "one compact lesson"?