In December 1942 Jacques Cousteau met the engineer Émile Gagnan in Paris for the first time, an employee at Air Liquide, a French company specialising in compressed gas. Cousteau requested Gagnan adapt the Rouquayrol-Denayrouze regulator invented in the 1800s and a year later Cousteau and Gagnan ordered Air Liquide to make two prototypes that Cousteau used to shoot the underwater film Épaves (Shipwrecks). They were the first modern diving regulators to be made.
In 1946 Air Liquide founded La Spirotechnique, its own division destined to conceive and mass-produce regulators and other diving equipment, and launched the CG45, the Model T of the diving world. In English-speaking countries, the CG45 was called the Aqua-Lung, and La Spirotechnique would go on to brand themselves after this iconic piece of equipment in 2003.
To this day Aqualung continues to make quality dive gear, and celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2023.
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