Jacques Cousteau and Pierre-Antoine was released in 1954. During the 1940s, Cousteau is credited with improving the aqua-lung design which gave birth to the open-circuit scuba technology used today. According to his first book, "" (1953), Cousteau started diving with Fernez goggles in 1936, and in 1939 used the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus invented in 1926 by Commander Yves le Prieur. Cousteau was not satisfied with the length of time he could spend underwater with the Le Prieur apparatus so he improved it to extend underwater duration by adding a demand regulator, invented in 1942 by Émile Gagnan. In 1943 Cousteau tried
The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure and 16 pages of color photos, made available by "National Geographic Magazine". The hand-held work in Ektachrome "is the first ever made in significant depths, using artificial light and scientific color correction." The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure The Silent World (subtitle: "A story of undersea discovery and adventure, by the first men to swim at record depths with the freedom of fish") is a 1953 book co-authored by Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Frédéric Dumas, and edited by James Dugan. Although a French national, Cousteau wrote the book in English. Cousteau and Émile Gagnan designed, built,