A Bit of History
Modern scuba (an acronym for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) was invented by Emile Gagnan and Jacques-Yves Cousteau in 1943. Some earlier systems certainly existed, but left much to be desired; as a French naval officer Cousteau himself had experienced the dire shortcomings of more primitive underwater gear. Following deployment by Allied forces in the latter days of World War II, scuba came home to the civilian world with some of the returning veterans.
In the earliest days of recreational diving, the typical dive instructor most frequently was an ex-military diver, and the early civilian training programs naturally mimicked the military regimens. It was not unusual, at that time, for recreational diver training to be extraordinarily lengthy and detailed, as well as physically demanding. Consistent with its military heritage and philosophy, diving at that time was not intended for the average person. Clearly, the extensive prerequisite training served as a barrier for many, and active participation was effectively limited to the select few who could measure up to those standards.
However, it was soon recognized that sport diving actually could be
something quite different than military diving, and thus the training should be treated accordingly. Los Angeles County was home to the first civilian diver training organization in the USA in 1954 and by the mid-1960’s several other certification agencies had appeared, all under the new banner of recreational diving. A primary goal was standardization and sanctioning of sport diver training. Anxious to attract wider participation, yet with a vigilant eye towards safety, ongoing efforts have been made to dramatically streamline entry-level training while simultaneously narrowing the types of activities deemed appropriate for sport divers. In the process, sport diving evolved into the avocation that we know today, with its standardized training requirements and its well-defined parameters and limitations.
Undoubtedly, during the ensuing years, a few participants felt unnecessarily constrained by the boundaries of sport diving. Some of these individuals started to look elsewhere for tools and techniques that would help expand the range of their personal diving activities. Their focus was turned back towards military diving protocols, as well as forward towards the more recent developments in commercial and scientific diving.
The term technical diving was coined by AquaCorps magazine in 1991 to identify certain advanced diving activities that were clearly outside the mainstream of recreational diving. Though the label itself was new, in fact, technical diving already had been around for a number of years and was continuing to grow in popularity.
An initial focus of early technical divers was nitrox, an alternate breathing mixture for air, the value of which already had been demonstrated in the military and scientific diving arenas. Specialized training organizations first offered nitrox training to sport divers in 1985, using materials from NOAA (US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration). Initially, nitrox was shunned within the recreational diving community, and as recently as 1991 these specialized training organizations were actually banned from a major dive industry event. Of course, since that time nitrox has gained far wider acceptance, and by 1995 nitrox effectively had made the leap from the technical realm into mainstream sport diving. Today most sport diver training agencies have established their own nitrox diving programs.
In the meantime, those early specialized organizations continued to expand into other areas of advanced diving tools and techniques, and eventually evolved into today’s technical diver training organizations. In particular, TDI (the technical affiliate of SDI) can trace its roots directly back to those early nitrox pioneers. Slowly but surely technical diving has gained wider acceptance and now is properly recognized and appropriately positioned as an advanced form of recreational diving.