Patrick Leahy Is Older Than the Aqualung
Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont was born on March 31, 1940, just a few years before a revolutionary invention that would open up the ocean to new kinds of exploration.
Modern scuba diving equipment technology, known as the aqualung, was invented in France in 1943 by Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan, though it wouldn’t go on sale in the U.S. until 1952.
Underwater diving equipment for breathing was invented in the 19th century, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that a so-called demand open-circuit design was conceived and tested successfully. Earlier versions returned the expelled breathing gas to the diver, filtering out the carbon dioxide. But the aqualung only delivered gas when it was needed, and expelled the exhaled breath to the diver’s surroundings rather than recycling it needlessly to the user.
