Healthways has been one of the five first American companies manufacturing diving gear, together with Voit, U.S. Divers, Dacor and Swimaster, small artisan entities.
It was founded at the early 1950s by Dick Klein, to whom the SCUBA acronym (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus) is due; this term was covered by copyright and all its products included the word Scuba in their name.
Few years later, Healthways went bankrupt, also because of an illness of its founder. In 1963, it was purchased by two Californian people, Dick Bonin and Gustav della Valle, an Italian who moved in America who paid 1 dollar to buy the brand name and its professional line.
The new company was timidly presented in the market and, at the beginning, continued the production of its last two regulators with one hose born under the Healthways brand, which both became "Scubair": Scubair Sonic and Scubair J. After that, the company was named ScubaPro, with a great and immediate success.
