equipment

During the second world war British and Italian "frogmen" improved dive technology using oxygen. Divers improvised and created new methods of breathing. Compressed air was rare at this time.

Equipment was limited and few dive club members had their own as it was so expensive. Members had to apply in writing to hire club equipment and sometimes had to wait. Early divers wore woolies or shirts and swimming trunks. Lillywhites imported the first fins in 1947 from Europe. Siebe Gorman produced Cousteau equipment from 1950 and in the early 60's made most of the aqualungs. Typhoon, run by Oscar Gugan, made fins, masks and suits.

The first sponge rubber wetsuits tended to rot. Neoprene was originally designed as a packing material. In 1960 some branch members used it to make their own wetsuits glued together with evestick. In 1961 single and double skin neoprene cost 3/6 and 5/5 per square foot.

An aqualung had a twinhose which was more difficult to use than scuba equipment, for example you had to lean to one side to clear the tubes underwater. Life jackets were worn but could only be inflated on the surface by popping a cartridge. People started adapting ex RAF tadpole cylinders and developed valves of their own as an official valve could cost a weeks salary of £15.

Tads held 25 cubic feet of air up to 120 atmospheres which would be enough for a shallow dive for 20 mins - 10m was a deep dive then! Most compressors in the early 60's could not manage more than 150 ats. At first the club used a compressor at St John's Wood dairy but within a few years they had taken over the compressor (there were 410 members at that time). By 1960 cylinders were capable of being charged to 200 ats.