Émile Gagnan

[2] Gagnan was born in the French province of Burgundy in November 1900, and graduated from technical school in the early 1920s.

He was employed as an engineer specializing in high-pressure pneumatic design by the large gas-supply firm Air Liquide.

The first production 'Scaphandre Autonome' - or 'Aqualung' was released in France in 1946 under the identification code "CG45" ("C" for Cousteau, "G" for Gagnan and "45" for 1945, year of the patent).

A year later, in 1947, Émile Gagnan and his family emigrated to Montreal, Quebec, Canada and he transferred to the employ of Canadian Liquid Air Ltd.

There he set up a lab and proceeded to engineer, design, prototype and patent a very large number of SCUBA and undersea technology firsts, including the direct ancestors of virtually every type of Scuba regulator in common use today.