Luigi Fabbri
Freelance journalist, underwater photographer, writer. The idea to create a website dedicated to diving equipment dating back to the first decades of our century and to their history was soon transformed in a bigger goal, more demanding than planned, that I was not able to achieve without the precious support of the people who participated with his/her own professionality and, above all, enthusiasm.
Many thanks to...
Arch. Franzo Raniero Cappitta
Raniero Cappitta, rare example of a creative specialist, whose job is information technology and design. He designed this website using Adobe Muse, which allowed him to make its exclusive graphic design. Later the website switched to the Drupal operating platform.
Dott. Giuseppe Ridulfo
Big sea lover and diving instructor, during the years he contributed to the growth of my collections with unique parts. I convinced him to make this website international, translating the main pages.
IT IS TIME TO THANK YOU ALSO...
all my friends who, from the beginning, shared my project and the commitment to exchange information and documents. Their technical and photographic material contributed and will contribute to make this website always more and more complete, available to all and opened to each one’s cooperation.
HDE Scuba Collection di Alfonso Gangemi, collezionista lodigiano e tecnico raffinato a cui si deve la sezione Revisione Attrezzature nel comparto Officina. In Links sarà presto presente l'indirizzo del suo nuovo sito Internet a carattere tecnico-storico.
VIRGINIO MASERA of Turin, Italy, was, probably, the biggest Italian collector regarding autonomous diving, from historical equipment to books to magazines, everything listed, step by step, in his extremely well-read website. Unfortunately Virginio left us at the end of 2021.
HDS ITALIA represents the logic reference point for all collectors and enthusiasts of antique diving things. Mainly dedicated to the professional diving history, in its MAS museum of Marina di Ravenna it guards several diving pieces, also rare or unique, to which I dedicated one page in this website.
FRANCO VITALI of Ferrara, Italy, the largest Italian collector of professional diving suits. He owns several extremely precious pieces, among them an extraordinary collection of Panerai watches, depth gauges and compasses that, at the occasion, he withdraws from his bank safety box to satisfy the requests of exhibitions and shows.
GIULIANO MINIATI for a long time, was the technical point of reference for divers in the Florence and Tuscany areas. From his historical collection very beautiful pieces appeared, envied by any collector.
GIOVANNI MORIGI during the years, collected a huge quantity of diving gear of any type unfortunately, hidden in his unbreakable place but, fortunately, shown in these pages.
CESARE SERRA from Colle Val d'Elsa, Italy, hunter from the historical times, he has been collecting rifles for twenty years, fascinated by the exclusive characteristics of many models, the result of brilliant ideas and inventions that today make rare and precious pieces
PIPPO CAPPELLANO of Trevignano Romano, Italy, besides being an exigent historical diving gear collector, is engaged in a very interesting initiative called "Vintage Scuba Lab", which we will present soon in the News section.
GIANNI RIDOLFI of Milan, Italy, at the beginning of his collection.
MATTEO TAGLIAPIETRA of Venice, fortunate owner of the incredible “Fortuna" depth gauge.
AUSI CANTARUTTI a diver who moved to live in the mountains, gave me his two excellent regulators of the first years of 1970, witnesses of many dives but in a perfect condition.
FABIO VITALE of Verona, Italy. Big expert and collector of professional diving gear, he is also attentive regarding historical diving. He often succeeded to get precious items, shown in his website.
LUIGI ZAGATI, from Turin but with the Sardinia sea in his heart, in the last 30 years collects equipment which tells diving history. Shown as a small museum in his summer house in Alghero, they are always available to be seen for his diving friends.
BARI SCUBA from Bari, Italy, with premises in the Puglia main city, is a very small association of divers, passionate of sea and old gear, which vice-president Gianni Piscitelli has an interesting collection which includes important pieces that, step by step, we will illustrate in these pages.
VITTORIO CARTA MANTIGLIA of Sassari, Italy, diving instructor, collect instruments, regulators and, above all, spear guns among them we find some precious and rare pieces, impossible to find. Some of them enrich our website.
MAURIZIO BALDINUCCI lives in Gubbio, Italy, where he is associate founder of Crazy Sub diving association. Collectors since few years, he specializes in historical regulators among them, more than 100 models with two hoses, most of them beautiful. Besides them, he has instruments, oxygen rebreather, single hose double-stage regulators.
MASSIMILIANO PERUGIA of Ravenna,Italy, is a very passionate collector of both sub and divers, has an incredible amount of pieces that does not exhibit, does not sell and does not catalog, only exchange with others when the opportunity happens. We do not define a collector, we hope it becomes.
NICOLETTA CODIFERRO from Verona, Naui representative in Italy for many years and diving course director, now Naui lifetime member, who contributed to the translation of part of this website.
LORENZO CERVELLIN from Venice. In his large well-stocked shop in Marghera there is everything for sports and professional diving, in a context decorated with Roman amphorae (in reality they are only perfect reproductions) and ancient helmets for divers. In the back there are two boxes full of old equipment in a corner, partly published on this site. They should one day show themselves in an absolutely original and ambitious exhibition that deserves to be soon realized.
DAVID WILSON from Newcastle in North East England. He has snorkelled in European and American waters over six decades. He collect diving literature, including rare and precious catalogs that will gradually appear on this site. Then fins, masks, snorkels, suits. He is currently researching basic diving equipment production across mid-twentieth-century Europe.
MARCO GUGLIELMINO ”Willly the Kid” from Turin, Italy, freediver and great fan of underwater hunting. In his curriculum there is an impressive number of patents and the list of his trips aimed at his favorite activity seems endless. He has contributed to this site with a remarkable collection of historical documents and images, all relating to freediving and the equipment dedicated to it.
ANDREA CAMPEDELLI from Verona, Italy, a great lover of deep diving and diving technique, has in its past two short periods in the professional field and in the collect of coral. Technical trainer, he was the guinea pig for the study of personalized decompression tables. Many experiences from which an insatiable passion for the study of tables of all origins and the search for historical documents concerning diving has derived, which he draws from his infinite digital archive. On social media he is known as "Jurassicdiver".
FRANCO MARTINI from Genoa, Italy, a great lover of diving history, has been organizing exhibitions and events on the beginnings of this activity since the 1980s. In 2007 Erga Edizioni published his book "Graffiti of Italian diving". In collaboration with the Unione Sportivi Subacquei - Dario Gonzatti, officially established in Genoa in May of '48, is now committed to ordering the large amount of historical documents accumulated in the memory of his computer.
MELVEN (MEL) BROWN Melven (Mel) Brown AM resides in the seaside village of WOONONA, NSW Australia. He commenced spearfishing in 1962 and is a life member and historian for the Underwater Skindivers & Fishermen's Association (USFA) and the Australian Underwater Federation (AUF). His collection is dedicated to preserving Australia's Recreational Diving History, its literature and equipment dating from the early 1940's. He is a regular contributor to the Historical Diving Society - Asia Pacific's journal "Classic Diver". In January 2015 Mel's work was recognized with him being awarded membership of the Order of Australia (AM).
FRANCESCHETTI FABIO of Padua, Italy, began collecting regulators and diving accessories in a nice exposition, then the love at first sight for hard hat divers equipment. In few years, his collection of helmets and other became remarkable, until the unexpected occurred with the death of his great friend Franco Vitali, of which he took over the entire collection. Now Fabio is the largest collector of Italy and, maybe, of Europe of things that trace the history of diving.
KEVIN SMITH lives in Canada, where he makes Youtube videos for "Alec Peirce Scuba". For the channel "Vintage Scuba" needs to find references and images of the past and for this reason it has collected a quantity of historical catalogs of diving companies, sometimes rare and precious.