The recorded history of the diving industry has been fundamentally corrupted over the past 150 years. The result is a complete misunderstanding of how it all began. Who invented the diving helmet? Refer to any encyclopaedia or history book and the answer you will find will almost certainly be wrong. The First Treasure Divers reveals the true and fascinating story. It blows away the myths and deliberate misinformation that have crept into the historical record. Thanks to the painstaking research the author has carried out over the past 25 years, the falsehoods are peeled away to unveil the true, definitive account. It follows the lives of two brothers as they struggle to turn their newly-invented diving helmet to advantage and how they wrestle with apathetic and even hostile authorities for recognition of their invention. It thunders through sunken treasure adventures to the heroism and horrors of the Crimean War. The impact of the invention of the diving helmet is immense.
In the 180 years since the Deane brothers carried out the first ever commercial helmet dive off the Isle of Wight on the south coast of England, the diving business has expanded to a global industry with an annual turnover in excess of $3,000,000,000. From another point of view, the life-support technology developed in the diving industry provided the knowledge for keeping the pioneering, high altitude pilots alive, which in turn evolved into the life-support systems of the astronauts who walked on the moon.