History of scuba diving the high number of recreational scuba accidents. this started with informal training and led to the creation of training and certification agencies. BS-AC was formed in 1953, CMAS in 1959, NAUI in 1960 and PADI in 1966. The sport of scuba diving had its roots among the multitude of small enthusiastic snorkelling and spearfishing clubs in the decades just before and after the Second World War. After the invention of the "aqualung" by Cousteau and Gagnan, the first commercially marketed underwater breathing apparatus became available for sale for sporting purposes in the late 1940s. In 1951, Jim Auxie Jr and
History of scuba diving requisitioning. Gagnan's boss, Henri Melchior, knew that his son-in-law Jacques-Yves Cousteau was looking for an automatic demand regulator to increase the useful period of the underwater breathing apparatus invented by le Prieur, so he introduced Cousteau to Gagnan in December 1942. On Cousteau's initiative, Gagnan's regulator was adapted to diving, and the new Cousteau-Gagnan patent was registered some weeks later in 1943. In 1957, Eduard Admetlla i Lázaro used a modified version of the Aqua-Lung made by Nemrod and broke the world record by descending to a depth of . The alternative concept, developed in roughly the same time frame