Cousteau Born: Ocean Explorer Opens the Deep to All

Jacques Cousteau was a naval officer who had been in a near-fatal car accident and spent his recovery swimming in the Mediterranean to rehabilitate his arms. That swimming led him to wonder why humans couldn't stay underwater longer, and the question consumed the rest of his life. Born on June 11, 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, in the Gironde region of France, he entered the French Naval Academy and was training to be a naval aviator when the automobile accident in 1936 shattered both arms and ended his flying career. Doctors recommended swimming as physical therapy. The Mediterranean became his rehabilitation pool and then his obsession. In 1943, while France was under German occupation, Cousteau and the engineer Émile Gagnan developed and tested the Aqua-Lung, the first practical open-circuit scuba system that allowed divers to breathe compressed air from tanks strapped to their backs. The device was revolutionary. For the first time, swimmers could explore underwater environments freely, without being tethered to air hoses connected to surface pumps. After the war, Cousteau persuaded the French Navy to lend him a minesweeper, which he converted into the research vessel Calypso. He spent the next four decades filming the ocean floor for television, producing a series of documentaries that aired in over 100 countries and introduced hundreds of millions of people to marine life. "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau" ran from 1968 to 1975 on American television and made Cousteau one of the most recognized figures in the world. He advocated for ocean conservation long before environmentalism became mainstream. He died on June 25, 1997, at age 87, in Paris.