Scuba divers & events that define generations

[MICHAEL D COLLINS]

In Australia it was for me the US show Sea Hunt and Ron and Valerie, Quote: Taylor opened our eyes to the wonders of marine life, and specifically sharks. I was 'hooked' early.
Ron and Valerie Taylor
And Ted Eldred, the man behind the Porpoise regulator, the world's first single-hose regulator.

As I remember, vaguely, single hose regs, you couldn't suck air when "upside" down. Maybe I remember wrong?

 

[Pressurehead]

Here is a link on the regulator posted on this site 2019 ,
I dived one in 1968, [first dive, did not know my arse from my elbow] can't remember how it breathed, I was in a wetsuit that did not fit, alone on the bottom tied to a line [for line pull comms] for 2 hours,at around 6m,I was cold and it was dark on exit as entry was at sunset .
Porpoise CA-1 regulator

 

[Akimbo]

As I remember, vaguely, single hose regs, you couldn't suck air when "upside" down. Maybe I remember wrong?

You might be confusing double-hose regulators, which are position sensitive. The only condition I can think of that would make breathing a single hose regulator difficult when upside-down is if water was leaking in around your mouthpiece or from a failed exhaust mushroom valve. Even double hoses are breathable in all positions, though are noticeably different.

@John C. Ratliff has some nice illustrations why double hose regulators are position sensitive.

 

[boulderjohn]

I got certified in early 2001 via a PADI course. Most of the classroom time was spent on learning to work the PADI dive tables. We weren't allowed to use computers for the course dives. I think that allows me to claim to be a 3rd generation diver.

But when I went diving everyone was using computers. One came with my rental gear on my first dive vacation and I bought one before my second one.

I was certified several years before you, with all the instruction on the tables and no mention of a computer. On my first trip as a certified diver, we did a multi-level, DM-led dive in Cozumel. Back on the boat, I whipped out my tables so I could log my dive, figure out my pressure group, and prepare for the next dive, just as I had been taught. When I realized that according to the tables I was long dead, I did not know what to do. I looked around and saw everyone else on the boat was looking at me with amusement. One of them pointed at my tables and said, "It makes a decent frisbee." I saw they all had computers, and I got one myself as soon as I got home.

My futile attempt to log my dive remains the only time in my life I have seen anyone attempt to use tables on a dive outside of instruction.

 

[DavidFL]

By these definitions so far I see myself starting on the cusp between Gen 1 and Gen 2. First certification in 1967, double hose regulator, J-valve, pretty small volume vest with oral inflation tube and the CO2 cartridge. My first class was in a Scuba Club at the Naval Academy, where the Superintendent at the time was Rear Admiral Draper Kaufman. Admiral Kaufman was clearly first generation, when he was a Navy LT in WWII he was instrumental in setting up and training UDTeams. I don't remember any trouble breathing upside down from that double hose regulator, which I still dive with, but practicing buddy breathing with a DH is definitely position sensitive depending on whether the intake hose or exhaust is "up".

 

[boulderjohn]

I am not going to try to define eras because I really don't feel I know enough about the earliest efforts, but I will suggest a couple of landmarks that might help others define eras.

• In 1953, U.S. Divers produced a mail order catalog for the purchase of scuba equipment. It used typical catalog methods for making purchases, ordering items by their letter on the page. For example, if you wanted to order a valve with a reserve, on page 6 you would order item J. If you wanted a valve with no reserve, you ordered item K.
• About that time the Scripps Institution of Oceanography started its formal instruction program. When Los Angeles Country wanted to do the same thing, they sent their people to Scripps to learn the Scripps method of instruction. When the Los Angeles people wanted to take the program nationally, they had a meeting of instructors from across the country in Houston in 1960, and NAUI was formed. Now, the fact that they were able to get a large group of scuba instructors from across the country in 1960 indicates that some kind of instruction was going on across the country before 1960, but I don't know what that was like. The YMCA was also active, but I don't know what that was like, either, except that I have read that the different YMCA sites were fiercely independent, so there was no unified program then.
• There was an era when scuba certification was just not required. My cousin learned in the early 1960s via a 5-minute talk from a salesman at a sporting goods shop, and he was able to take care of his scuba needs by just returning to that shop. I heard a man tell a personal story at a conference that indicates the seismic shift. In 1967 he was excited to be on a dive boat for a week of interesting diving in Australia, but he was floored with the captain insisted that only certified divers could dive. He told the captain that his father had taught him how to dive more than 20 years before, and he had done thousands of dives since then. No dice. No certification--no dives. Finally, the crew prevailed upon the captain to make an exception, and he was allowed to dive. As soon as he got back home, he went to the nearest PADI office and got certified. His name? Jean-Michel Cousteau.
• The shift away from U.S. Navy tables as the basis of recreational diving must have had a big impact. Those tables had surface intervals based on the 120 minute compartment, and they required significant rounding. This led to very long required surface intervals, meaning the now standard 2-tank resort diving schedule must have been impossible. Modern dive algorithms, including the PADI tables, Buhlmann, and all standard computer algorithms have shorter surface intervals that make this diving possible.

 

[Akimbo]

By these definitions so far I see myself starting on the cusp between Gen 1 and Gen 2.

Interesting. I see myself as being solidly in Gen2 being certified in 1962. However, Navy Scuba school in 1970 (the first 4 weeks of second class school) was a kickback to the late 1950s.

First certification in 1967, double hose regulator, J-valve, pretty small volume vest with oral inflation tube and the CO2 cartridge.

At least in my sphere of visibility (Northern California), single hose regulators and SPGs were more common than double-hose regulators by 1967. I got my first Bouée Fenzy in 1968 (horse-collar with an HP cylinder and OVP valve). Almost nobody purchased J-valves, probably because the kelp pulled them so easily.

My first class was in a Scuba Club at the Naval Academy, where the Superintendent at the time was Rear Admiral Draper Kaufman. Admiral Kaufman was clearly first generation, when he was a Navy LT in WWII he was instrumental in setting up and training UDTeams.

OMG, how cool is that! Admiral Kaufman was a true legend! I wish someone would write a biography on him for ScuabBoard...

 

[DavidFL]

@Akimbo 'poke' received but not very high on my todo list. I was a fourth classman during that year, the lowest form of life on the local planet. I saw the Admiral hanging around the pool a few times during classes, and the upper classmen even talked to him, but if he had spoken to me I would probably have just had a cardiac arrest and ended up on the bottom of the pool. My entire survival strategy for that year was to keep my head down and never get noticed. Our classes in 1966 and 1967 were some combination of Navy underwater swimmer's school adapted from Florida to Maryland and whatever had to be added if anything for the YMCA to include our club in their certification program. I remember when they handed out the (U.S. Divers) catalog there were single hose regulators in it, but the very heavy emphasis from the leadership was that the tried and true regulators were double hose.

 

[lowwall]

• The shift away from U.S. Navy tables as the basis of recreational diving must have had a big impact. Those tables had surface intervals based on the 120 minute compartment, and they required significant rounding. This led to very long required surface intervals, meaning the now standard 2-tank resort diving schedule must have been impossible. Modern dive algorithms, including the PADI tables, Buhlmann, and all standard computer algorithms have shorter surface intervals that make this diving possible.

I was amazed to discover the PADI RDP tables were introduced in 1988. They actually postdate the Uwatac Aladin, the first mass market digital dive computer. So the PADI table era was doomed from the start, although the work that went into creating them survives as the DSAT algorithm still used by many dive computers.

Which leaves us with the question of how did earlier divers manage short SI dives?

 

[boulderjohn]

I was amazed to discover the PADI RDP tables were introduced in 1988. They actually postdate the Uwatac Aladin, the first mass market digital dive computer. So the PADI table era was doomed from the start, although the work that went into creating them survives as the DSAT algorithm still used by many dive computers.

Which leaves us with the question of how did earlier divers manage short SI dives?

My RDP instruction book has a first copyright of 1985, but there were computers on the market before that. The Aladin Pro (1987) was the first big seller, though.

Perhaps a benchmark should be when OW instruction featuring computers rather than tables. I believe the first agency to do that was SDI--at least that is what their website says. (That may have had to do with SDI's ownership also being involved with UWATEC ownership.) PADI did not offer computer based OW courses for many years after that, and I don't know the degree to which other agencies started doing it. I know teaching the tables in the OW class is still at least an option for both PADI and SSI.