Word: aqua
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Pioneer & Prophet. As any skindiver will readily admit, his sport is almost the singlehanded creation of a lean (6 ft., 154 Ibs.). visionary Frenchman named Jacques-Yves Cousteau. He is, all in one. its pioneer, foremost promoter, prophet, and poet. As the developer of the Aqua-Lung, he set divers free to roam in the kingdom of the fish. With his book The Silent World (1953). he became diving's foremost philosopher. The prizewinning film made from the book opened the world's eyes to the magic world under the sea, sent both scientists and pleasure seekers hustling...
...held breath alone. Students at the prestigious Horace Mann School in The Bronx get classroom credits in diving, can pick up pointers by watching Sea Hunt, a television underwater adventure series starring Real-Life Diver Lloyd Bridges. Equipment sales of U.S. Divers Co., American licensee for Cousteau's Aqua-Lung, tripled from 1957 to 1959, are expected to soar another 75% in 1960 alone...
Finally the two experimenters hit upon the heart of the Aqua-Lung: a valve the size of an alarm clock, which lets highly compressed air escape from a tank until it balances the water pressure, then feeds it to the diver through a mouthpiece. One day in 1943 Cousteau posted Skindiver Frederic Dumas as a lifeguard, waddled out into the Mediterranean under the 50-Ib. Aqua-Lung, and realized his dream. He was free: "I experimented with all possible maneuvers-loops, somersaults and barrel rolls. I stood upside down on one finger and burst out laughing, a shrill, distorted laugh...
Fear on the Reef. Cousteau could scarcely wait for the war to end to develop his new discovery. He sold the French navy on the virtues of the Aqua-Lung, soon got leave for government-backed oceanographic work on the 360-ton Calypso, a converted minesweeper from the British Royal Navy. Aboard the Calypso, Cousteau gathered the material and shot the films that were to bring sudden fame to diving and himself. The Silent World, written originally in English, was published in the U.S. in 1953, sold more than 486,000 copies (worldwide sale: 5,000,000). His 86-minute...
...Diver Prince Rainier. Cousteau is also head of France's Underwater Research Center. He is backed in part by the French government, and in part by Washington, D.C.'s National Geographic Society, takes up the slack with profits from his business firms. In addition to controlling the Aqua-Lung patents, he runs on the side a film company, dubbed Associated Sharks as his own wry commentary on the ethics of the trade. Even so. Cousteau's wife has sold many a belonging to hold the spider web together for the sake of science...