Diving –
Foundations of Diving Technology

The era of standard diving dress began in England in the 1820s with brothers John and Charles Deane. The idea of inventing dress to enable humans to breathe underwater was adapted from a similar, but less successful, invention by Charles Deane and Edward Barnard to fight fires. By early 1829, the Deane brothers had successfully developed and tested their ‘open’ diving helmet. This prototype consisted of a leather helmet with two windows supplied with air from a forge pump... a far cry from standard diving dress in use today.