"Flippers, goggles, oxygen tank" -- cringeworthy, or useful??

[scrane]

Communication is to impart understanding. I understand the concept of flippers, goggles and oxygen tanks. Not a problem for me.

 

[In2theabyss]

I never really put any thought to terminology thinking about it after reading this thread, but mask and tanks are embedded in my vocabulary. And @cerich I love my new signature series doubles breathing apparatus!!

 

[Zef]

I spent 6 months in Afghanistan as part of a NATO unit. Each day I would try to speak in Italian with one of my colleagues from Verona. He would constantly correct my grammar to which I would respond: "so the message passed?!"

One day he asked: "what does this mean...so the message passed?"

I replied...."for you to correct me you had to understand what I was meaning to say in the first place so although not everything was perfect I got enough of what I was trying to say correct to pass the message."

The basic premise of communication is to pass a message...if you screw up the lingo, jargon, vocabulary, grammar, etc, but are still understood then the message has been successfully passed. Could it be passed better? sure...but it passed none-the-less.

So, if some non-diver refers to a mask as goggles, or air as O2, or flippers as fins....contextually both divers and laymen tend to understand and relate to the intended meaning. The message passes. Communication is successful. All is good.

When I was studying at the US Naval War College, we had conducted an academic/military exercise that required coming up with operational plans in response to strategic and operational guidance. The Captain (O6) that was acting as commander of the made-up task force had a mantra: "Don't let "best" be the enemy of "good enough"".

Constantly correcting people about jargon they are not really familiar with and most likely don't care too much about can become a barrier to communication....barriers to communication are bad in my opinion.

The message just being passed is quite often "good enough".

Cheers and happy diving!!!

-Z

 

[Sam Miller III]

In the beginning ...

Frenchman Louis de Corlieu invented a life saving device identified as Swimming propellers
Owen Potter Churchill discovered them in Tahiti-
Churchill entered into an agreement with De Corlieu began producing Swimming Fins in a Los Angeles factory.
1939 first year production was 940 pairs all purchased in SoCal.

Concurrently the first recreational dive company in the US Pops Romano's Los Angels based company Sea Net was producing Flippers

In 1960 Bill Barada (LA Co UW Instructor & NAUI instructor # A1 ) with coauthor Lloyd Bridges published a book "Mask and Flippers. the story of Skin diving" --(Hard & soft cover --no ISBN or LCCC #) Bill who is credited with many first in diving including the recreational dry suit and author of about 10 diving books began his diving with goggles and flippers in the 1930s - so it was a fitting that he used the termonogly Flipper to describe a dive fin.

I have not conducted a survey of my dive manuals or dive related books - but I suspect this it the last time the term Flipper was used to describe dive fins.

When self contained diving appeared in the US in the 1940s diving cylinders - tanks --were identified as "blocks" ...ie a single block - one scuba cylinder a double block two cylinders or even a triple block - three cylinders. I never questioned why ? by the early 1960s the term disappeared

In the very beginning masks were often called face plates the term used by commercial divers

Sam Miller, III
CC
@Scuba Lawyer
@Akimbo

 

[In2theabyss]

I replied...."for you to correct me you had to understand what I was meaning to say in the first place so although not everything was perfect I got enough of what I was trying to say correct to pass the message."

Well said!

 

[Zef]

When self contained diving appeared in the US in the 1940s diving cylinders - tanks --were identified as "blocks" ...ie a single block - one scuba cylinder a double block two cylinders or even a triple block - three cylinders.

Here in the French speaking part of Belgium and next door in the northern part of France, the term Bloque (block) is still in use to refer to ones cylinder(s) and BCD (vest or bp/w) combined.

-Z

 

[Sam Miller III]

Now after all these good and great years I know what the term means
@Zef I sincerely thank you
SAM

 

[captain]

Is it a bathing suit or swim suit, do you wear it while taking a bath.

 

[nolatom]

Is it a bathing suit or swim suit, do you wear it while taking a bath.

Maybe they are sunbathing suits. On the average beach I see, most of the suits never go for a swim....

Though originally it might be that if your baths were in the river/lake/ocean or nowhere, and you didn't go in naked carrying a bar of soap, then it's a bathing suit.

 

[Akimbo]

I have not conducted a survey of my dive manuals or dive related books - but I suspect this it the last time the term Flipper was used to describe dive fins.

Here are some thoughts to help your research:

1. I remember Mike Nelson, AKA Lloyd Bridges, referring his Voit Viking fins as flippers pretty often in Sea Hunt episodes. Who know who the writers picked it up from?
2. For all I know, the term would still be with us if it weren't for the "Flipper" TV show about a porpoise. It would have been confusing to refer to fins as flippers on air. That "might" have contributed to the popularization of the word "fins"
3. Does anyone remember what they called fins in the 1951 movie The Frogmen? That lived-on for a couple of decades on TV. I was a baby when it was in the theaters.
4. I can't remember what they called fins on the Malibu Run TV show, later changed to The Aquanauts. Related trivia: As far as I remember, the only other time common use of the term Aquanauts was for the US Navy Sealab divers.

Common terms with the fewest syllables ultimately tend to survive, in the US anyway. I suspect that terms continue far longer in conversation than in written form. In this case, there is a record in video form.