Jacques Cousteau loved being underwater so much that when he found his diving time limited by the scuba equipment modern to his day, he improved the design himself, helping develop the Aqua-Lung. His design increased the time a diver could spend submerged by only supplying breathing gas on demand (i.e., when the diver inhaled), instead of sending a constant supply – a much more economical approach.

This inventor’s touch was simply a means for the French naval officer, explorer, and filmmaker to spend more time with his life’s true love…the sea. He published his first and most famous work, “The Silent World,” at age 42. The date of publication was sometime in early February of 1953, and numerous references suggest it was 62 years ago today, on February 3, 1953.

While Cousteau was born and raised in France, he chose to publish his first book in English. (He had spent part of his youth in the United States.) In “The Silent World,” Cousteau described his love affair with the ocean, his earliest days diving in his 20's with relatively flimsy Fernez goggles, and his subsequent Aqua-Lung innovations. (The book, which Cousteau co-wrote with Frédéric Dumas, carried the unwieldy subtitle “A story of undersea discovery and adventure, by the first men to swim at record depths with the freedom of fish.”)

“The Silent World” was a major success, and inspired a documentary film three years later by the same name. The movie was a technical marvel for its time, showing the ocean depths in color for the first time. Shot over two years on various locations on Cousteau’s ship Calypso, the film version of “The Silent World” won an Academy Award for best documentary feature, and took the coveted Palme d'Or award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.

Cousteau shared an uncanny bond with the ocean and its lifeforms. He theorized that porpoises used echolocation before scientists knew about it by watching a group of them follow his boat. He helped design an experimental “diving saucer,” and found at least two shipwrecks on his adventures. He was at the center of two long-running documentary series, including his seven-year stint on ABC’s “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau,” which ran from 1968-1975. He was an outspoken environmentalist in his later life, and might have done more to popularize oceanic exploration than anyone in the 20th century. He made his own trip to the Silent World in 1997, when he died of a heart attack at age 87.

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