Name Jean-Baptiste La | Died 1792, Paris, France | |
Jean-Baptiste de La Chapelle (c.1710–1792, Paris) was a French priest, mathematician and inventor.
He contributed 270 articles to the Encyclopedie in the subjects of arithmetic and geometry. In June, 1747 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
He was the inventor of a primitive diving suit in 1775, which he called a "scaphandre" from the Greek words skaphe (boat) and andros (man) in his book Traite de la construction theorique et pratique du scaphandre ou du bateau de l'homme (Treatise on the theoretical and practical construction of the "Scaphandre" or human boat). The invention of the Abbe de la Chapelle consisted of a suit made of cork which allowed soldiers to float and swim in water. As the name and description suggest, it was more of a flotation suit than a diving suit.