PUBLISHED THIS MONTH
FINS: ➤ Britmarine Clipper ➤ Dunlop Aquafort ➤ Heinke Hans Hass ➤ Moscow Rubber Tyulen
MASKS: ➤ Francese Oeil Marin
REGULATORS: ➤ Bioengionics Nautilus 1966
SPEARGUNS: ➤ Russian Rpb1 1979
SPEAK ABOUT: ➤ Off Topic - The Blue Hole of Maldives
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We start with January to publish a list of what has been added to the site in the current month, so that it is possible to immediately identify what is new. From February the updates will be in real time.
PUBLISHED THIS MONTH
COMPLEMENTARY GEARS: ➤ Technisub Phonar
REGULATORS: ➤ Aga Tm 3300
SPERGUNS: ➤ Technisub Pulce 40 serie personalizzata ➤ Copino 1962 ➤ Galeazzi Comet ➤ Mares Spring - Mares Juni
TORCHES: ➤ Technisub Nuova Iodin
MASKS: ➤ Bitmarine Clipper Sea Nynph ➤ Cressi Sub Medusa 2 prima e seconda serie 1951
REBREATHERS: ➤ Fenzy/La Spirotechnique Oximix 3C
GENERAL CATALOGS: ➤ Mares Catalogo 1970 ➤ Mares Catalogo 1969
SPEAK ABOUT: ➤ VISIONARIE MASKS - birth and development of the large masks that included the regulator function, such as the Scubapro Visionaire and the Galeazzi Tricheco
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BETWEEN HISTORY AND LEGEND
CHRIST OF THE ABYSS
1938 – A lifeguard, a sea “fanatic” and a boy.
No fins, a mask made from an air chamber and a kind of net.
They dive to recover fishes’ victims of bombers. They don’t know yet but, they are some of the people who invented diving.
Then, Duilio Marcante - the lifeguard - commits to improve and codify the first diving techniques; Egidio Cressi - the fanatic - builds the first spearguns and the first, real mask, Dario Gonzatti - the boy - conceives something similar to the future regulator, with the idea to connect it to a compressed air bottle.
War stops everything.
1946 – They believed that the correct path was the oxygen rebreathers, used by the italian navy seals (Ferraro, De La Penne and their colleagues) so, they abandon the idea of the compressed air.
Marcante has the ideas, Cressi builds, Gonzatti tests. So, the recreation oxygen rebreather is born however they don’t know its limits. In front of San Fruttuoso Dario Gonzatti ascends, lifeless, from a pure oxygen dive at -42 meters.
It is the 21st of September 1947.
It has been a memorable summer, made of fabulous fish catches, discovers, brilliant inventions.
Back from the funeral, to honor his very close friend, Marcante dives in the tragedy waters and he conceives the idea of the Christ of Abyss.
Now Christ of Abyss is there, to remind a precursor, a glory dedicated to those who sacrificed their life, in the sea and for the sea. The statue was crafted in bronze from melted down metal of important origins: parts of sank ships, bells, and the medals of mariners, Olympic athletes, donated by people who know the sea.
It is still there, lowered on the bottom of the sea on August 29, 1954 among the shouts of the alarms of the surrounding ships, with flower wreaths, his arms raised which seem to beg that surface which many, too many did not reach anymore.
Luigi Fabbri – September 1977
The Christ of Abyss bronze statue, made by the Genovese sculptor Guido Galletti, it is 2,5 metres (8.2 ft) high and it is welded on a reinforced concrete foundation which weight 90 tons, cemented to the seabed. It is submerged in front of the east point of San Fruttuoso bay in Liguria, Italy and his head stands at 12 (39.36 ft) meters below the sea surface.
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NEWS stopped since a long time but, in the meantime, we improved not only our website contents but many other subjects. Recently, we added the new "RARITY" menu, addressed to those people who are engaged in the research and classification of ancient equipment. In our standard "LET’S TALK OF..." menu, we published the detailed historic-technical articles of Maurizio Baldinucci, the best at world level. There are some articles surely very interesting also to those people who are not much involved in diving such as, for example, Movies and respirators.
People who like to repair gear, in the "WORKSHOP" section they can find now documents and a complete support for regulators and spear guns. We will keep it updated, by inserting new brands and models.
NEWS section partly change its target; it was now improved by inserting documents and, general news of special interest, both current and historic. It is an initiative to make your visit to this website fascinating, also to those people less passionate of old diving gear.
Totally bilingual in Italian and English language, revised and widened in its contents, this website remains open to everyone’s contribution. If you wish to participate with documents or pictures of your equipment, that are not already published in this website please, send an email to info@blutimescubahistory.com, by specifying what you have. We will contact you.
Our website is broad and it presents, among other, forms of 800 types of gear and more than 2.000 pictures; for this reason, we recommend you watch it with a large monitor!
Good web surfing.
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The section “Let’s talk of …” is having a big success; it is opened to everybody. We wish that other collectors profit to divulge their precious competence. In the meantime, a brand-new article of Maurizio Baldinucci came out, this time dedicated the relationship “movie-regulators”. A fascinating union in which we can re-experience, by means of an accurate narrative and lots of images, scenes of famous movies where we can see historic diving gear together with famous actors.
Concerning diving equipment, our website recently acquired some rare pieces, such as the precursor of all diving spear guns, the Pulvenis, that can be set between the hand spears and the first spear gun models, with the classic handle invented in 1937 by Kramarenko. Then Mares VicoJet De Luxe stainless-steel model, perhaps produced in a very small series or only on order, in competition with the exclusive SuperTrident of Salvas, the first stainless steel spear gun offered as an alternative to the standard Trident.
In the regulator sector, we can highlight the continuous increase of the two-hose models made in USA that, slowly, allow to build the evolution of the series began with Mistral, in an escalation of changes and new models to arrive to the Royal Mistral branded, above all, U.S. Divers and Aqualung, unknown in Europe.
A special attention is brought to the illustrated catalogues of diving gear of the first decades, difficult to find but extremely important means to build, with precision, the rise and evolution of historic equipment and instruments appeared between 1935 and the beginning of the 1970. In their specific section, until now the complete catalogues are 22, scanned page by page and downloadable. Many other are coming, also of unknown companies. It is impressive to discover how much information it was available to the divers, during the time, considering that once, almost everything was produced by artisans, alternating genius inventions to extravagant ones. Speaking about numbers, with the contribution of several collectors and passionate, our descriptive technical sheets of different products are more than 600; files dedicated to dating report the origin year of 1.100 gear and other hundreds are waiting to be inserted. Speaking about the pictures, those present in our website are more than 1.500.
One section is still, that one of Special Collections and, it is a pity considered the curiosity created by little known things, equal to the simplest and expected ones, presented following a scheme. It could be the humblest piece of equipment, the snorkel, to show a series of types, models, colors to tell its evolution path, from the piece made by a gas hose used by pioneers to the more sophisticated units, equipped with valves and deflectors. Then knives, gadgets, harpoons and others. All contribute to enrich our technic/historic culture or, simply, our curiosity for that adventurous and fascinating period which characterized a diving age, very far away.
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Sometime passed from our last encounter and we have lots of news. Besides the continuous increasing of contents in each sector, during the last months a new column was opened called Old Market, which disappeared at the beginning of November. At its place, after few weeks, there was its closing notice. Why? This Market was born with a special goal. First, it had to be known, to transform in something exclusive. At the beginning it had a discreet success but, in October, it brought to insisting and continuous requests of not compatible insertions, information, evaluations, derogations from the accepted ages; at the end, this was a loss and, in some cases, also annoyances, enough to decide to close it. A pity but, it will not be the last time that it happens. This website wants to stay alive, anything but stagnant therefore sections that, during the time, show to be difficult to manage or little appreciated, will be changed. Back to our Old Market, we might be thinking to reissue it, based on completely different assumptions. Its place has been taken now by "OUR COLLECTIONS", a space dedicated to those people who are cooperating to manage this website and wish to show to the public images of what they collected with passion. Remaining in the blue string of the main menu, the column "LET’S TALK OF...." is opened to anyone who has something particularly interesting to publish. A precious article of Maurizio Baldinucci with the title "the surprising origin of Mistral" is already there. Another news is the publication of the complete catalogues of the diving companies of the historic times (Technic> Catalogues and logos of diving companies>complete catalogues): for now, we have Malagamba (1939), Cressi (1947 and 1953), Mares (1963), Technisub (1968). If you have a catalogue dated until the beginning of 1970, it will be published with your name. Same proposal regarding the last news “CURIOSITIES AND STRANGENESSES", a collection of anecdotes and unknown news, to which everybody can attend. Someone told us that it is quite hidden (Museum > documents and images of diving history > Curiosity and strangenesses). We will see how to make it more visible. Last thing: in July we succeeded in opening the brand-new Diving Collectors Register of Italy, the collectors’ register of diving items of all ages: This is a unique initiative in the world, which already counts registrations of many among the most famous International collectors. The website address is < http://www.divingcollectorsregister.org >. If you are collectors of diving gear or of diving helmet equipment please, register!
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To grow and continuously improve is part of the priority of this website, of its own nature. So, it happened also in the last period, with the introduction of new products, pictures, technical information, historic news. Above all, with the last improvement of its structure and the introduction of the search engine, although if not final yet. Also, if we did not advertise it, has already several followers also International, from Europa to USA until Australia, where one collector asked a lot of questions and advises. Unfortunately, we are not able to satisfy the requests of those who ask for all pages in English however, several documents will be available also in English soon. We remind you that this website is opened for the cooperation of everybody, as we specified in the News. Please, let us know about special gear that you own or technical news, and we will publish them with your name.
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The August’s calm suggested to review some parts of the website structure; you can see it above all in its new menus and submenus, more immediate and faster. Also, the guide has been reviewed since, before, it was not too clear and useful to the majority, as it had to be. We corrected few mistakes. We kindly ask you to inform us about them, when you find one! Concerning the new introductions, there are several ones in the Lamps and electronic computer sections while some other addition has been made in Spear gun, Underwater Photography, Equipment age. Historic company profiles are now four, with the entrance of Healthways and Scubapro, soon adding Spirotechnique and Technisub. In the introduction of the companies that made the history of diving, somehow, we try to follow a time line but, the difficulty to find news and images of their age sometimes makes this a hard job. We remind you that this website is opened for the cooperation of everybody. Please, send us news and special gear that you own. We will publish them with your name. Going back to the main page of these news, you find some information.
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FRIDAY JULY 1, 2016
Right now, this website is online however, it is incomplete, with many sections, poor of contents. It will take two months to improve it, with a lot of material.
Work in progress, be patient.
SUATURDAY JULY 30, 2016
In this last period, the website structure had some improvements while the Guide highlighted in red in the main menu now should give a clear idea of how to navigate in the different sections, subsections and menus.
The new introductions refer to several sectors.
The technical sheets of spear guns were completed for all 96 models present in the Virtual Museum; in Equipment age, the list of gear passed 900 items; in Underwater Photography we added the complete series of Nikonos; single hose regulator arrived to 116 and in the Fins and Masks section there are now about twenty products. Also, the Workshop section enriched of other two illustrated maintenance charts with the very precious series of demonstrating pictures.
At this point, this website is composed of more than 500 pages but, considering that many sections are low of contents, thanks to the contribution of our new and old friends we see the possibility soon of reaching 1.000 pages. It is an ambitious goal, quite worrying!!
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NEWS PER OTTOBRE 2022
TECHNICAL SHEETS ➤ .........
TECHNIQUE > COMPLETE CATALOGS ➤ ........
HISTORY > HISTORICAL FIGURES ➤ ........
HISTORY > WRITING AND IMAGES ABOUT DIVING HISTORY > BOOKS AND MANUALS ➤ ........
CURIOSITIES AND ARTICLES > STRANGE THINGS AND EXTRAVAGANCES ➤ ........
TECHNIQUE > PAGTENTS ➤ ........
TECHNIQUE > VINTAGE ADVERTISEMENT ➤ ........
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