How old is diving? Documents say it is 89 years old, to be precise. Many years passed from Glenn Orr foundation in California of the first diving club that we know, calling it "The Bottom Scrapers ". Two years after, the Frenchman Yves Le Prieur with the film-maker Jean Painlevé founded in Paris the "Club de Sous-l'Eau" and, always in 1935, French Navy officially adopted the self-breathing Le Prieur apparatus presented two years before. Le Prieur realized that, to divulge his apparatus at recreational level testing was necessary, teaching to use it so, he invented to organize diving courses in a Paris swimming pool. This picture dated 16 May 1936 taken from the book "Histoire de la Plongée" by Mauro Zürcher is a testimony, where we see him as instructor in front of twenty trainees, all carrying in their hands the full-face mask of his apparatus.
Obviously, it is not true that the first courses, the first diving clubs are things from the ‘50s or even the ’60s as we sometimes hear. Our story began much earlier.
(from "Histoire de la Plongée" of Mauro Zürcher)
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