Diving Heritage was founded in the spring of 2000 by Karin and Bert Dodde from The Netherlands. They have both been fanatical SCUBA-divers for several years now. Once taken by the diving bug they also developed a deep interest in professional diving. They read many books on the subject and studied a lot of company and product information. On many occasions they had interesting discussions with each other and with other people interested in this subject.

Thru this they created a movie in their minds about the development of professional diving from the day it started. They also developed a great respect for the many brave people involved in this process. People died and nobody knew why. "The bodies showed no wounds and the men were perfectly healthy before they went down." Without knowing it, divers were exposed to things like oxygen poisoning, nitrogen narcosis and decompression sickness. Especially in the early days of diving, numerous divers underwent risky experiments (like sitting in a pressure chamber breathing pure oxygen under a pressure of 4 atm not really knowing what the results of this test would be).

Karin and Bert also gathered a good knowledge of the equipment used through the centuries and their designers and manufacturers.
Thanks to all these great pioneers, diving has evolved to a professional and relatively safe business and also became available to the general public through diving clubs with the development of the aqualung.

 

This brings us to the goals of Diving Heritage and the reasons that this site was build.

The new management.

In the spring of 2006, Karin And Bert decided they would like to retire and the management of the museum was taken over by Iain MacQuarrie from Great Britain. Iain has held a life long fascination with the undersea world and is a keen Scuba diver himself. Iain's interest in historical diving was inspired and fuelled by his father, Neil. His stories of Ship salvage in the 1940s and 1950s when he was a Salvage diver using standard gear were gripping and exciting to the youngster and he resolved one day to learn more and explore the sea around us.

It has been an enormous effort to bring so much information together in a structured way but is was very enjoyable and as long as professional diving will develop, the site will be updated. There are many fellow enthusiast that helped in perfecting Diving Heritage. They are given courtesy where applicable. This goes for you too ! If you feel you have a useful contribution to Diving Heritage, Iain would like you to contact him at info@divingheritage.com


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