Scaphandre Autonome

As Jacques Cousteau stayed in Toulon and joined the French resistance, Simone, Jean-Michel, and Philippe, who had just been born before the attack in Toulon, were settling comfortably in Paris. Simone’s father, Henri Melchior, was the head of Air Liquide, a major and important company on which the Germans depended for industrial gases, and welcomed Simone and his grandchildren’s visit. In passing, Simone asked her father if he knew anyone who could help her husband with a demand regulator to dispense gas from a compressed air cylinder. Based on the Le Prieur apparatus, Cousteau and his team had already known that compressed air was key to breathing underwater, however, to stay underwater for extended periods of time, they needed a regulator that would let out gas only when the diver took a breath.

In December 1942, Cousteau met Émile Gagnan, an Air Liquide engineer, in his office in Paris. One year later, Cousteau, Dumas, Tailliez and their families reunited in Bandol, a town near Toulon. The navy men was stationed there but had most of the days to themselves. Gagnan joined them, bringing with him an edited version of an existing regulator he had in his office, and after a few more tweaks here and there and adozen more test dives, the first prototype of the Scaphandre Autonome, or the Aqua-Lung was born. It enabled Cousteau, who performed the test dive, an hour of free and undisturbed underwater exploration at depths of 60 feet. After 8 years at sea together, Cousteau, Dumas and Tailliez knew that they had finally succeeded.

(Photo courtesy of vintagedivertreasures.com)

News of an independent apparatus for breathing underwater soon got out, and everyone wanted to try diving with it on. Cousteau became the first male scuba diver, and Simone, the first female scuba diver. It was noted that during this period, Cousteau made several hundred dives.

After the success of the Aqua-Lung, the Sea Musketeers decided to take underwater filming one step further and attempted filming shipwrecks.