Aqua-Lung facts for kids
Aqua-Lung was the first Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (or "scuba") to become popular and sold to the public. Many people today call the equipment a twin-hose diving regulator, or demand valve. The Aqua-Lung was invented in France during the winter of 1942–1943 by two Frenchmen: engineer Émile Gagnan and Jacques Cousteau, who was a Naval Lieutenant (French: lieutenant de vaisseau). It allowed Cousteau and Gagnan to film and explore underwater more easily.
The Aqua-Lung demand regulator used to use two hoses: one for air to be breathed in and one for air to be breathed out. Now, the exhaust for air is inside the mouthpiece of the diver. When a diver breathes in, he breathes the air from the tank through the hose. When he breathes out, air bubbles come out of the mouthpiece through the exhaust valve.
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Mechanism
Scuba systems invented before the Aqua-Lung were mostly closed-circuit rebreather equipment. This means that no air is let out of an exhaust valve. The diver breathes new breathing gas in and exhales. The exhaled gas is returned through a scrubber that removes carbon dioxide into a counter-lung reservoir. Some fresh gas is added to maintain enough oxygen for the diver and that is the air the diver inhales (breathes in).
The Aqua-Lung is a self-contained open-circuit demand system, which means that breathing gas is provided from a high-pressure storage tank to the diver when the diver wants it. When the diver inhales (breathes in), the pressure in the supply hose is released. When the diver stops inhaling, the pressure is back to normal and the valve shuts off. The air is vented to the surroundings.
Invention and patent
An earlier underwater breathing regulator, known as the régulateur, was invented in France in 1860 by Benoît Rouquayrol. He made it to help miners escape from flooded mines. In 1864, Rouquayrol met the lieutenant de vaisseau Auguste Denayrouze, and together they changed the regulator so divers could use it. They called it the Rouquayrol-Denayrouze apparatus. The French Navy Minister ordered the first units on August 28, 1865.
From 1884 to 1965, several companies and entrepreneurs bought or inherited the patent for the Aqua-Lung. Émile Gagnan, a French engineer, miniaturized and changed the equipment he owned into a gas generator because of a fuel shortage during World War II. Gagnan's boss, Henri Melchior, knew that his son-in-law Jacques-Yves Cousteau was looking for an automatic demand regulator to make his underwater breathing apparatus better. Cousteau and Gagnan made a regulator for diving. They were issued a patent some weeks later in 1943. After the war, in 1946, both men founded La Spirotechnique to mass-produce and sell their invention, which they called the CG45 ("C" for Cousteau, "G" for Gagnan, and "45" for 1945). Cousteau called the CG45 the "Aqua-Lung" so that it could be sold to English-speaking countries.
Competition
The Aqua-Lung was not the first self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, but it was the first to be widely popular. In 1934, René Commeinhes changed a firefighter's breathing apparatus to make it usable for diving.
It is not clear who invented the first single-hose regulator. An advertisement in Popular Mechanics of October 1950 offered a single hose regulator for sale by Divers Supply in Wilmington, California. At the same time, Australian Ted Eldred designed a single-hose regulator that he called the Porpoise.
Trademark issues
The term "Aqualung" first appeared in print on page 3 of Jacques-Yves Cousteau's first book, The Silent World, in 1953. Aqualung, Aqua-Lung, and Aqua Lung are registered trademarks for scuba diving breathing equipment. That trade name was originally owned in the United States by a company known as U.S. Divers (now Aqua Lung America). The name U.S. Divers sounded very official and very American, but it was owned by a Frenchman and sold to a French company.
In the United States, the term aqualung was popularized by the popular television series Sea Hunt (1958). Like some other registered trademarks, the term "aqualung" became a genericized trademark in English-speaking countries. People sometimes call items by their trademark names rather than their real names. Other examples of "genericized trademarks" are Kleenex (tissue), Chapstick (lip balm), and Band-aid (adhesive bandage strip).
In Britain, Siebe Gorman held the British rights to both the trade name and the patent. He did not try to control the use of the word, and "aqualung" remained a common public generic word for that sort of apparatus.
The word entered the Russian language as the generic noun акваланг ("akvalang"). That word was taken into Lithuanian as the generic noun "akvalangas"; "langas" is Lithuanian for "window," making the literal meaning of the word "aqua-window."
In the United States, U.S. Divers managed to keep "Aqualung" as a trademark. The acronym "SCUBA," or "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", originated in the United States Navy. SCUBA became the generic term for any type of self-contained breathing set for diving. Soon the acronym SCUBA became a common noun – "scuba" – all in lowercase.
Interesting facts about the Aqua-Lung
- Inventors before Cousteau and Gagnan had worked on equipment that could help people breathe underwater.
- John Smeaton tried to use an air pump for underwater breathing in 1771.
- William James invented a breathing belt in 1825.
- John and Charles Deane, Augustus Siebe, Henry Fleuss, and Christian Lambertson also worked on underwater breathing apparatus.
- Many divers were injured or killed from oxygen toxicity because of the high pressure of the oxygen in the tanks. This is something before Cousteau and Gagnan sought to fix.
- The Aqua-Lung was first sold in France in 1946.
- Arthur C. Clarke wrote a book that features Australian Ted Eldred's single-hose regulator, the Porpoise, all the way through it.
- Cousteau and Gagnan's company, La Spirotechnique, saw his single-hose regulator. They threatened to flood the Australian market with cheap Aqualungs and put him out of business. Ted Eldred sold them his company.
See also
- Timeline of diving technology
- History of scuba diving
- Scuba set
- Diving regulator
