Jacques Cousteau

Jacques Cousteau

Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born in St. Andre de Cubazac, France in 1910. The

son of a lawyer, Jacques was warned by doctors to avoid strenuous activities

due to chronic enteritis and anenemia. This did not affect his sense for

adventure. At age 11, he built a foot working model of a two hundred ton

marine crane. At age 13, he made a battery powered automobile. In 1930, at the

age of twenty, Jacques entered the French Naval Academy. Form 1933 to 1935 he

served in the Far East aboard the cruiser Primaguet and ashore in Shanghai. He

trained as a Navy flier until a serious automobile accident ended his aviation

career. For his war efforts he was awarded two medals. One for honor and the

other, A Purple Heart. Afterwards, he took part in mapmaking study along the

Indochina Coast. In 1936, near Toulon, he tried underwater goggles for the

first time, and his future course was set. In 1943, he and Emile Gagnan

developed the first regulated compressed-air breathing device for sustained,

unencumbered diving. After World War II, he created and organized, in

conjunction with Commander Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas, an underwater

research unit to carry out technical experiments and laboratory studies in

diving. In 1950 he founded "Campagne Oceanographique Francaise". Also, in the

same year, Captain Cousteau acquired Calypso, a retired minesweeper of

American construction. Over the next year, she was transformed into an

oceanographic vessel, and the adventures of the now-famous ship began. In the

four decades since, she has sailed literally around the world and has explored

many of the planet's major rivers. In collaboration with engineer Jean

Mollard, Cousteau designed the Diving Saucer in 1959, a round, highly

maneuverable, two-person submersible capable of diving to a depth of 350

meters. In 1965, twin one-man submersibles, the Sea Fleas, were launched by

Cousteau. He also directed three experiments in saturation-diving techniques:

Conshelf I off Marseille (1962), Conshelf II in the Red Sea (1963), and

finally Conshelf III (1965), near Nice, in which six men breathing a helium-

oxygen mixture lived and worked at 100 meters for three weeks. This was the

first of its kind. Not only is Captain Cousteau a oceanographer, he is also a

author and documentarian. Jacques Cousteau has produced more than seventy

films for television, films which have won numerous Emmys and other awards. He

has also produced three full-length theatrical feature films, The Silent

World, World Without Sun, and Voyage to the Edge of the World. Cousteau has

written, in collaboration with various co-authors, more than fifty books,