Submersible Pressure Gauge (SPG)

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Sam Miller III

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Who on this board began diving prior to the SPG introduction to the US Market?

Who on this board began diving prior to the SPG introduction to the European (world?) Market?

When did you begin your diving career?

SDM
 
Who on this board began diving prior to the SPG introduction to the US Market?

Who on this board began diving prior to the SPG introduction to the European (world?) Market?

When did you begin your diving career?

SDM

When I was certified in 1972, we used j valves and I did not see a pressure gauge at that time ( cert by Great Lakes Divers in Niagra Falls/Buffalo NY area)....When I did my first big set of dives on a January Term project in Tobago in 1976, out of about 20 people diving, 18 were using j valves, and 2 were using these pressure valves with their j valves. It was more of a curiosity at this time. Of course, none of us were using BC's either...it was just the 72 on a harness.
 
I did my first scuba dive in 1959, using borrowed equipment, a Nemrod double hose regulator and a US Divers tank and Bac-Pac. I had my own fins, mask and snorkel. I was 16, and had been free diving and snorkeling for almost 10 years at that point. I remember that I began buying equipment from Koseff's on New Jersey's Long Beach Island the following year, piece by piece. I dived occasionally, but not as much as I did years later. Solo diving at night in rocky inlets for lobster comprised 90% of my dives.

There were no SPGs, of course. J valves were what we relied on. There were no SPGs when I entered the service a few years later. I'm not sure when they became available. I spent a long time in Jamaica after I left the military. No SPGs were available there either, though everything else any sane human might desire was. It was in Jamaica that I really began diving seriously, in 1970.

There were no SPGs that I knew of when I eventually got certified in 1972, but when they became available a few years later (my memory regarding exact years is a little misty) it was as if all the problems of the universe had been solved. I bought one immediately, a Scubapro with a black face that I used for the next decade.

I started doing some wreck diving, and returned to the Caribbean as often as possible. It was a paradise even then. It is not a paradise anymore, but I still return several times each year, always hoping to catch a glimpse of what used to be. Like visiting an old girlfriend.

When I saw my first SPG I decided that now any moron could scuba dive. I was right.
 
Thinking back to the late 70's and j valve diving with no pressure guage.....we did this very much like the GUE's do.....where each diver is supposed to KNOW approximately how much air they are breathing throughout the dive...based on relative exertion levels, and duration experience on past dives.....Early in our diving experiences, we might be surprised by the sudden lack of air on the attempted breath...which we followed with the tug on the j valve lever.....I think for most of us, this soon gave way to looking at your watch, and having a very good idea of when the tank would suddenly have no air, and we would be pulling the reserve....the Dive watch...with rotating bezel, was the key gear for the observant diver....that plus the capillary depth guage :)
In other words, once we became reasonably good divers back then, we knew fairly closely how much air we would have at any point in the dive...and how to plan for the rest of the dive in any given moment. When the submersible pressure gauge came out--to the point that most of us were using it ( early 80's ??), it was not really epiphany type gear....but it did feel like an intelligent addition. Few resisted it....Many resisted the nonsense of being forced to wear a BC !!!!
 
I was certified in 1962. SPGs were available but not widely used, at least in Northern California. US Divers and Scubapro introduced one that year but, as I recall, Sportsways was the only company that promoted them and had offered them for some time. I first noticed them in the Aquanauts (later Malibu Run) TV show in late 1960... who appeared to have a deal with Sportsways.

A few tank valves had a port to screw one in, which was amazingly dumb since the hoses were vulnerable to damage in handling and you needed an SPG for every cylinder. I don't recall seeing an SPG adapter or port for double hoses, so that was probably the biggest impediment to their adoption.

The strange thing is they were all center-back port (where the hose connects) instead of bottom port like today's SPGs. Even as an 11-year old, it was obviously dumb to make the hose bend 180-270°+ to read it!

I sold my double hose, started using one, and noticing them on dive sites around 1965-66. Hannes Keller used a US Divers Calypso single hose on a record setting 820' wet-pot (chamber) dive in late 1960. In my foggy memory, that was a watershed for single-hoses which were viewed as "cheap crap" before, but some of that sentiment lingered.

I believe that some of the Gagnan patents mentioned what is now known as an SPG and he suggested them to Cousteau in the 1940s. I doubt there was ever an enforceable patent since there was plenty of prior art for a gauge on the end of a hose.

No idea when they were introduced in Europe, but I would have guessed it was before here in the US.
 
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Started in 1960. Didn't see or even hear of an SPG until several years later. No idea when they were introduced.
 
First certified in 1974. Regs, or tanks, or both had a J valve.
When I got my first SPG, in 1975, some knew what it was, a few people went"WTF is that?" others went "huh?", others went "you're gonna die", and a few more went "it's a fad, it'll never catch on".
(Which seems to be the standard list of comments for any new gear configuration/component. ) :)
 
... a few people went"WTF is that?" others went "huh?", others went "you're gonna die", and a few more went "it's a fad, it'll never catch on".
(Which seems to be the standard list of comments for any new gear configuration/component. ) :)
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I have in my files (somewhere) the litigation involving a popular east coast shop owner involving a diver died on the surface using a recently introduced personal floatation device (PFD) (aka Mae West) The diver inflated the PFD choking him (?) and forcing his head into the water (?) and the diver succumbed to drowning. This placed the diving community in a huge panic...

I recall chatting with the late Jim Christensen of SCUBA pro when he showed me the prototype of the SCUBA Pro Stab Jacket

I also recall the same comments when Larry Scott and Bill Walters introduced the back inflation At Pac at an LA Co UW instructors Association symposium.

In the genesis of recreational diving there was considerable resistance to new untried innovations, Now apparently anything new and radical is immediately acceptable to the bubble blowers.

SDM
 
Mid-seventies - certified with YMCA - bought an AL80 with a J valve and a single regulator - no redundancy. We used horse collar BCs with an oral inflator and co2 cartridge - no pressure gauge we used a watch to try and figure out how much time we had and if the breathing got hard we would trip the J valve. I still have the tank and J-valve and I still dive with it and it still works.
 
I still have 2 steel 72's with J-valves from when I started in the early 1970's. The Divemaster - before that was a designation - had a pressure gauge and you checked-in and -out to get your tank pressure recorded. The buoyancy compensator with an inflator hose and over-pressure relief was a big step from the Mae West emergency vest.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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