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
Jacques Cousteau he sued his son who wished to open a holiday center named "Cousteau" in the Fiji Islands. On 11 January 1996, "Calypso" was accidentally rammed and sunk in the port of Singapore by a barge. The "Calypso" was refloated and towed home to France. Jacques-Yves Cousteau died of a heart attack on 25 June 1997 in Paris, two weeks after his 87th birthday. He was buried in the family vault at Saint-André-de-Cubzac, his birthplace. An homage was paid to him by the town by naming the street which runs out to the house of his birth "rue du Commandant Cousteau",