Cousteau publishes The Silent World
On February 3 1953 French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau publishes his most famous and lasting work The Silent World.Born in Saint-Andre-de-Cubzac France in 1910 Cousteau was trained at the Brest Naval School.While serving in the French navy he began his underwater explorations filming shipwrecks and the underwater world of the Mediterranean Sea through a glass bowl.At the time the only available system for underwater breathing involved a diver being tethered to the surface and Cousteau sought to develop a self-contained device.In 1943 with the aid of engineer Emile Gagnan he designed the Aqua-Lung the worlds first self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (scuba).
With the Aqua-Lung the largely unexplored world lying beneath the ocean surface was open to Cousteau as never before.He developed underwater cameras and photography and was employed by the French navy to explore navy shipwrecks.In his free time he explored ancient wrecks and studied underwater sea life.In 1948 he published his first work Through 18 Meters of Water and in 1950 Lord Guinness a British patron bought him an old British minesweeper to use for his explorations.
Cousteau converted the ship into an oceanographic vessel and christened it the Calypso.In 1953 he published The Silent World written with Frederic Dumas and began work on a film version of the book with film director Louis Malle.Three years later The Silent World was released to world acclaim.
The film which revealed to the public the hidden universe of tropical fish whales and walruses won Best Documentary at the Academy Awards and the Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival.With the success of the film Cousteau retired from the navy to devote himself to oceanography.He welcomed geologists archaeologists zoologists environmentalists and other scientists aboard the Calypso and led numerous excursions to the worlds great bodies of water from the Red Sea to the Amazon River.He headed the Conshelf Saturation Dive Program in which men lived and worked for extended time periods at considerable depths along the continental shelves.His many books include The Living Sea (1963) Three Adventures Galapagos Titicaca the Blue Holes (1973) and Jacques Cousteau The Ocean World (1985).
He also produced several more award-winning films and scores of television documentaries about the ocean making him a household name.He saw firsthand the damage done to the marine ecosystems by humans and was an outspoken and persuasive environmentalist.Cousteau died in 1997.
