Scuba Pioneer

[Mantaray95616]

To be more accurate my first dive was using an Aqua-lung. The acronym S.C.U.B.A was not coined still some years later.

The Scottish Sub-Aqua Club founded in Glasgow, Scotland chartered a 40 seater bus at various intervals to transort members and their families to dive locations on the Ayrshire coast and occasionally to the east coas,t mostly south of Edinburgh. These were family outings and divers had to pre-book their dives (there were a limited number of tanks and regulators available). Non-divers picnicked, snorkeled, overturned rocks in tidal pools or just enjoyed the sea air. It was an all day affair.

I can't remember the exact date, but my first open water dive was a shore dive in 1955 at Turnberry, Scotland close to the famous golf course.

 

[The Chairman]

I can't remember the exact date, but my first open water dive was a shore dive in 1955 at Turnberry, Scotland close to the famous golf course.

Exposure suit? Single pane mask? Duck fins? What did that gear look like?

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Too bad Sam Miller is no longer with us
This would have been a great meeting.

@Mantaray95616 I’m truly honored by your history.

 

[Akimbo]

To be more accurate my first dive was using an Aqua-lung. The acronym S.C.U.B.A was not coined still some years later.

Small correction: The S.C.U.B.A. acronym was coined as early as the 1940s in the US but many of the rebreather papers were classified at the time. As a result, S.C.U.B.A., later SCUBA, and now Scuba didn't come to define our sport until many years later.

We mostly called it "Skin Diving" in the US in the 1950s and 60s. That is what dive shops were listed under in the Yellow Pages and in popular media. Skin Diver Magazine was the leading dive publication for decades.

See this thread:

World War II
The prospect of war increased EDU's focus on support for combat swimmers. The units that would become the UDT or Underwater Demolition Team had not been formed yet. Christian Lambertsen designed a series of pure Oxygen rebreathers starting in 1940 as a medical student. He named them Laru for Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit which became a standard for the UDT and SEALs for decades.

Lambertson coined the acronym
SCUBA in 1952* to describe all
Self-Contained Underwater
Breathing Apparatus​

* some accounts indicate that Lambertson used the term in the 1940s... either way, he is universally credited.

You might find our History forum, Diving History: Tales from the Abyss, interesting.