The timeline of underwater diving technology is a chronological list of notable events in the history of the development of underwater diving equipment. With the partial exception of breath-hold diving, the development of underwater diving capacity, scope, and popularity, has been closely linked to available technology, and the physiological constraints of the underwater environment. Primary constraints are:
the provision of breathing gas to allow endurance beyond the limits of a single breath, safely decompressing from high underwater pressure to surface pressure, the ability to see clearly enough to effectively perform the task, and sufficient mobility to get to and from the workplace.
Pre-industrial Ancient Roman and Greek era: There have been many instances of men swimming or diving for combat, but they always had to hold their breath, and had no diving equipment, except sometimes a hollow plant stem used as a snorkel. About 500 BC: (Information originally from Herodotus): During a naval campaign the Greek Scyllis was taken aboard ship as prisoner by the Persian King Xerxes I. When Scyllis learned that Xerxes was to attack a Greek flotilla, he seized a knife and jumped overboard. The Persians could not find him in the water and presumed he had drowned. Scyllis made his way among all the ships in Xerxes's fleet, cutting each ship loose from its moorings; he used a hollow reed as snorkel to remain unobserved. Then he swam nine miles (15 kilometers) to rejoin the Greeks off Cape Artemisium. The use of diving bells was recorded by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the 4th century BC: "...they enable the divers to respire equally well by letting down a cauldron, for this does not fill with water, but retains the air, for it is forced straight down into the water." 1300 or earlier: Persian divers were using diving goggles with windows made of the polished outer layer of tortoiseshell. 15th century: Konrad Kyeser, illustrated his manual of military technology Bellifortis with a diving suit fitted with a hose to the surface. This diving suit drawing can also be seen in the manuscript Ms.Thott.290.2º, written by Hans Talhoffer, which reproduces sections of Bellifortis. 15th century: Leonardo da Vinci made the first known mention of air tanks in Italy: he wrote in his Atlantic Codex (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan) that systems were used at that time to artificially breathe under water, but he did not explain them in detail. Some drawings, however, showed different kinds of snorkels and an air tank (to be carried on the breast) that presumably should have no external connections. Other drawings showed a complete immersion kit, with a plunger suit which included a sort of mask with a box for air. The project was so detailed that it included a urine collector. 1535: Guglielmo de Lorena and Francesco de Marchi dived on a Roman vessel sunk in Lake Nemi using a one-man diving bell invented by de Lorena. 1602: Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont built an air-renovated diving suit that allowed a man to remain underwater in the Pisuerga river on August 2. The diver passed an hour underwater before being ordered to return by King Philip III. 1616: Franz Kessler built an improved diving bell. Around 1620: Cornelis Drebbel may have made a crude rebreather. 1650: Otto von Guericke built the first air pump. 1715: the chevalier Pierre Rémy de Beauve, a French aristocrat who served as garde de la marine in Brest, built one of the oldest known diving dresses. De Beauve's dress was equipped with a metal helmet and two hoses, one of them air-supplied from the surface by a bellows and the other one for evacuation of the exhaled air. the Englishman John Lethbridge, a wool merchant, invented a diving suit built like a barrel with armholes and a viewport, and successfully used it to salvage valuables from wrecks.
Industrial era
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