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Exploring their jungle, Cousteau and Tailliez learned to spear fish with curtain rods and knitting needles. Says Cousteau: "It fascinated me to do something that seemed impossible." But, like other little knots of skindivers around the world, they were still tethered to the surface by the need for air.
The problem had badgered divers as far back as 5000 B.C.. when the Sumerians spun the tale of a swimmer who sought the weed of eternal life beneath the waves. Down through the centuries, woodcuts show submerged men hopefully sucking on bags full of air or puffing on tubes reaching to the surface. Looking for something better, Cousteau tried an oxygen lung based on a design developed by the British as early as 1878. He almost killed himself. He did not know the fatal flaw of oxygen: it becomes toxic at depths below 30 ft.* Twice Cousteau had convulsive spasms, was barely able to drop his weights and make the surface.
Laughing Matter. Cousteau allowed World War II to distract him only briefly and at intervals from his search. He served as gunnery officer on the cruiser Dupleix. After France's surrender he stayed in the navy in Occupied France, but worked for the underground; once, posing as an Italian officer, he led a party into the Italian headquarters at Sete and spent four taut hours photographing a code book and top-secret papers. Cousteau will say little about his experiences: "I have always hated espionage and secret-service work, and I still do. I think it is unfair."
Under the eyes of the indifferent Germans, Cousteau worked with a brilliant engineer named Emile Gagnon to develop a lung that would automatically feed him safe compressed air so that he could swim with both arms. To be safe, a diver must have air in his lungs at the same pressure as the surrounding water. With less pressure, his lungs may be crushed; with more, they may expand until they rupture. To survive. Cousteau required a device that gave a diver air at pressures that matched the changing weight of water as he sank and rose.
Finally the two experimenters hit upon the heart of the Aqua-Lung: a valve the size of an alarm clock, which lets highly compressed air escape from a tank until it balances the water pressure, then feeds it to the diver through a mouthpiece. One day in 1943 Cousteau posted Skindiver Frederic Dumas as a lifeguard, waddled out into the Mediterranean under the 50-Ib. Aqua-Lung, and realized his dream. He was free: "I experimented with all possible maneuvers—loops, somersaults and barrel rolls. I stood upside down on one finger and burst out laughing, a shrill, distorted laugh. Nothing I did altered the automatic rhythm of the air. Delivered from gravity and buoyancy, I flew around in space."