| Man has always tried to explore the vast and | | | | the centuries, the focus of finding the proper way to |
| mysterious watery depths in various ways. Diving first | | | | cover the face or head and to enable air ventilation |
| appeared 5000 thousand years ago and it had major | | | | lead to the first flexible diving suit created in 1960, a suit |
| role in hunting, as well as military and recreational | | | | that could protect the diver from enormous amount of |
| applications. Diving by holding the breath was | | | | oxygen which made them intoxicated i.e. anesthetized. |
| something taught from early childhood. Divers had their | | | | The diving suit with a diving apparatus was called |
| legs bound with ropes and attached to stones and | | | | 'scuba', as in 'Self-Contained Underwater Breathing |
| many could reach depths of 31 meters. | | | | Apparatus'. Only after this invention did diving become |
| Generally and the most importantly, the problem with | | | | swimming under water. |
| diving was the inability to breathe under water. In the | | | | A condition that can be caused by diving is |
| lack of artificial materials for diving suits, which would | | | | decompression sickness - the breathing of air under |
| make efficient protection for divers, natural ones like | | | | pressure compresses the oxygen that spreads |
| leather and wood were used, and later glass and | | | | through the blood and body tissue. If the pressure is |
| various metals. At the end of the 16th century a diving | | | | abruptly released, the oxygen returns to a gas state at |
| bell was invented that had an open bottom enabling | | | | a speed that is too great for the body to absorb in a |
| the air to be captured inside it. Additional bells were | | | | normal way and it consequently forms bubbles of |
| added later to refill the air quantity using valves. In 1715 | | | | oxygen. The solution is to gradually return to the |
| more developed equipment appeared that consisted | | | | water's surface. The first decompression chamber |
| of a barrel of air with a window made of glass and | | | | was created in 1983 in America due to this discovery. |
| leather waterproof sleeves. These inventions were | | | | Diving is enjoyed everywhere and depending on the |
| limited because they left no space for maneuvering | | | | depth an oxygen tank is used or the diver can use |
| and didn't have the possibility of constant additional air. | | | | breath alone. The latter method is quite safe to use for |
| After numerous more or less successful efforts over | | | | shallow diving and needs no equipment. |