The ancient free divers of the past
The history of diving begins long before modern scuba technology, with the earliest free divers whorelied solelyon lung power to explore the underwater world. For thousands of years, humans have held their breath and descended beneath the surface to collect food, gather resources, and even carryout militaryoperations.
The Ama of Japan,often women, have practiced free diving for over 2,000 years, harvesting abalone, pearls, and seaweed. Using simple clothing and later goggles, they could dive to 20 metersand hold their breath for minutes. This tradition, both a livelihood and a cultural practice, still survives in some coastal villages today.
Early scuba divers
Diving bells were among theearliest methods for underwater breathing. As early as Alexander the Great’s time, crude glass barrels were used to observe beneath the water, and by the sixteenth century, more practical bells existed. These large, open-bottomed chambers trapped air, allowing divers to breathe and collect resources like sponges or pearls. However, they were heavy, cumbersome, and limited by short air supplies, keeping divers tethered to thesurface.
However, with the invention of the dive helmet In the nineteenth century, diving helmets greatly improved underwater capabilities. Early versions by William James and the Deane brothers were refined by Augustus Siebe in 1837, creating the “hard-hat” system. This featured a copper or brass helmet with a canvas suit, surface-supplied air, and exhaust valves, allowing divers to stay submerged longer. Lead boots and belts helped them walk on the seabed for salvage, ship repairs, and military tasks. Many divers of this time were employed via diving companies to remove sea weed and other items from ship hulls to improve speed, as well as salvage operattions and recon. However, this scuba system was highly unpredictable as air from the surface could be cut off for multipul reasons.
The emergance of closed circuit systems
losed-circuit scuba systems, also called rebreathers, emerged as an alternative to open-circuit scuba, which vents exhaled air directly into the water. In a closed-circuit system, the diver’s exhaled carbon dioxide is removed, and oxygen is replenished, allowing the same breathing gas to be reused. This makes closed-circuit scuba highly efficient, producing no bubbles, which was especially valuable for military and stealth operations.
The first commercially practical rebreather was developed by Henry Fleuss in 1878 in London. His system used a rubber mask connected to a breathing bag, with oxygen supplied from a copper tank and carbon dioxide scrubbed using rope yarn soaked in a caustic potash solution. Fleuss’s invention was mainly experimental but demonstrated that self-contained underwater breathing could be achieved without constant surface air supply.