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International
ABOUT DIVING
How Has Underwater Exploration Evolved Over The Years?
By Robert Lamb
People have plunged into the water for food, valuables and a better understanding of their environment for thousands of years, but even the most skilled divers have their limits — the record for a skin diver is 417 feet (127 metres).
Chafing at those limits, humans have dreamed of underwater vehicles and improved diving apparatus for ages. Plato, Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci all wrote about underwater exploration. In fact, early swimming goggles, made of wood and thin slices of shell, date back to at least 14th-century Persia.
Treasure Spurs Sailors to Sea
Diving for sunken treasure has long been a driving force behind the evolution of underwater exploration. When you think of Spanish galleons transporting fortunes in gold and silver during the 1600s and disappearing beneath the waves for anyone's taking, it's easy to see why.
The Spanish Crown and the Dutch East India Company, both major players in seventeenth and eighteenth century international sea trade, offered rewards and percentages on salvaged riches. To take advantage of these incentives, investors pooled their resources to fund recovery expeditions. Whoever had the best underwater technology had the advantage. Given the rewards involved, inventors were willing to test many new technologies.
With the Diving Bell and the Steampunk Robot some inventors simply tweaked the diving process. In 1690, Edmond Halley (of Halley's Comet fame) patented the first diving bell. It allowed divers to work from a transparent, submerged, enclosed hemisphere of air on dives of up to 60 feet (18 metres) without surfacing for 90 minutes. Oxygen piped down from above made this feat possible. Modern bells allow divers to work at depths of 1,000 feet (305 metres).
Other technologies amounted to early submersibles, such as John Lethbridge's 1715 'diving engine'. The wooden barrel body featured glass eyeholes and leather gauntlets for the diver's hands. The invention resembled a steampunk robot and allowed a diver to work for 30 minutes at depths of 60 feet.
