Buddy diving just before and after the Second World War. After the invention of the "aqualung" by Cousteau and Gagnan, the first commercially underwater breathing apparatus became available for sale for sporting purposes in the late 1940s. As the new sport of scuba diving rapidly expanded through the 1950s, several sporting organisations—notably the YMCA—began programmes to train swimming enthusiasts in this new aquatic pastime, and began to codify what they believed were proper practises for this expanding sport. The YMCA considered the buddy system a useful corollary to the "never swim alone" rule of their swimming and lifesaving programmes. Cousteau himself independently
Vintage scuba Vintage scuba Vintage scuba is a reference to the art of scuba diving using vintage-style gear, which is generally defined at this time as equipment dating from 1975 and earlier, and to that equipment. The most striking and well recognized example of vintage scuba gear is the twin-hose or double hose regulator, a popular style of regulator since Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emile Gagnan pioneered the first such design, the C45 Scaphandre Autonome, which was marketed in the USA (along with a tank and harness) as the Aqua-Lung. At present, there is a renewed interest in the care and use of