Aqua Lung America
| Subsidiary of Air Liquide | |
| Genre | Diving equipment |
| Headquarters | Vista, California, USA |
| Parent | Air Liquide |
| Website |
www |
Aqua Lung America is a Vista, California US firm which makes scuba equipment. Aqua Lung America is a division of Aqua Lung/La Spirotechnique which is in turn a division of the French company Air Liquide.
History
Aqua Lung America, along with Aqua Lung International, is a division of Air Liquide, which held the patent on the first "Aqua-Lung" regulator until the patent expired.
This "Aqua-Lung" regulator was created by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Émile Gagnan during World War II, in 1943.[1] Both men created the La Spirotechnique company after the war, in 1946, to sell regulators. La Spirotechnique was and still is nowadays a division of Air Liquide. To sell its regulators in the USA Air Liquide created another division of La Spirotechnique, U.S. Divers, which ended as a division of Aqua Lung America when La Spirotechnique took the name of its main product: Aqua Lung/La Spirotechnique.
Cousteau and Gagnan first patented their invention in 1943, but they patented again in 1945, this time under different names. In France: Scaphandre Cousteau-Gagnan (Cousteau-Gagnan scuba set) or CG45 (for Cousteau-Gagnan 1945). For all English-speaking countries Cousteau coined the label "Aqua-Lung".
References
- ↑ Jacques-Yves Cousteau & Frédéric Dumas, Le Monde du silence, Éditions de Paris, Paris, 1953, Dépôt légal 1er Trimestre 1954 - Édition N° 228 - Impression N° 741 (in French)