In 1938, Egidio and Nanni Cressi began producing manually the first diving spear fishing guns and the first masks: it was the beginning. The response was positive and, in 1943 they proposed a mask of considerable success that than, updated, stayed in their catalogue until the 70s: its name was “Sirena”, in black rubber and round glass. The company with the double name Cressi Sub-Il Pescatore Subacqueo (the diving fisherman) was officially founded in 1946. The year after, in its historic headquarter of Quinto in Genoa, the company began manufacturing the oxygen rebreather model R47, a huge progress with respect to the types used by navy seals during the war just ended. In the meantime, the mask range increased and the spear fishing gun models were a dozen. In the following years, Luigi Ferraro is employed as collaborator, a young man full of innovative ideas, very away that, one day, he would have been the founder of the company Technisub. He was introduced to Egidio Cressi by Duilio Marcante. He developed the Rondine fins in 1951 and the Pinocchio mask in 1952, advanced products that made Cressi famous in Europe and in USA. In 1957, it is the turn of the oxygen rebreather model AR57B for a large military and civil distribution. In that year the SpiroSub brand was born, wanted by Cressi to commercialize everything that is not part of its traditional range of items, in particular the Mistral and Aquamatic regulators produced under license from La Spirotechnique. In 1963 the brand became AerSub and the new price list included cylinders, instruments and compressors. But it was short-lived, in fact since 1967 all products bore the Cressi Sub name exclusively.
The catalogos of the following decade are enriched of the most modern pneumatic spear fishing guns such as Mach 1:1 and 0,9 and of the series of the 2-stage regulators model Polaris. The Rondine fins become Super with a model with mobile lamella.
The 1970 sees another record of Cressi Sub with the launch of the first, real buoyancy compensator in the world, connected to the tank and supplied by a hose coming from the first stage.
After that, the long Rondine L fins in rubber and then the Gara fins, with the reinforced nylon blade will follow.
Egidio Cressi died in 1986, when the company is, by then, an international recognized reality.
In the meantime, the headquarter moves to a new, big manufacturing plant in Genoa where its nephew Antonio manages the company, following its long tradition: perhaps the only company in the diving sector to remain always owned by the same family.
Sirena mask (from site CressiSub)
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