Word: lungfuls
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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...
...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...
...Sumerians spun the tale of a swimmer who sought the weed of eternal life beneath the waves. Down through the centuries, woodcuts show submerged men hopefully sucking on bags full of air or puffing on tubes reaching to the surface. Looking for something better, Cousteau tried an oxygen lung based on a design developed by the British as early as 1878. He almost killed himself. He did not know the fatal flaw of oxygen: it becomes toxic at depths below 30 ft.* Twice Cousteau had convulsive spasms, was barely able to drop his weights and make the surface...
Under the eyes of the indifferent Germans, Cousteau worked with a brilliant engineer named Emile Gagnon to develop a lung that would automatically feed him safe compressed air so that he could swim with both arms. To be safe, a diver must have air in his lungs at the same pressure as the surrounding water. With less pressure, his lungs may be crushed; with more, they may expand until they rupture. To survive. Cousteau required a device that gave a diver air at pressures that matched the changing weight of water as he sank and rose...
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...