Genre Diving equipment Parent organization Air Liquide | Website www.aqualung.com Founder Jacques Cousteau | |
Type Subsidiary of Air Liquide Headquarters Vista, California, United States | ||
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. 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".