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
Aqua Lung/La Spirotechnique coined by Cousteau himself on that purpose. In the USA during World War II the American military physician Christian J. Lambertsen designed a wartime frogman's rebreather which in 1952 got called the SCUBA (acronym for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus), and later the name (changing to 'scuba' and treated as a word) was used to mean any underwater breathing set. In Britain the word "aqualung" became a generic trademark for open-circuit underwater breathing sets and stayed so for many years. The word "scuba" became the generic word quickly in the USA and eventually in Britain. For more information see Aqua-lung#Trademark issues.