
Émile Gagnan
Inventor
1900 – 1979
Who was Émile Gagnan?
Émile Gagnan was a French engineer and co-inventor of the diving regulator used for the first Scuba equipment in 1943. The demand-valve, or regulator, was designed for regulating gas in gas-generator engines, but was found to be excellent for regulating air-supply under varied pressure conditions.
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".
A year later, in 1947, Émile Gagnan and his family emigrated to Montreal, 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 an incredible number of SCUBA and undersea technology firsts; including the direct ancestors of virtually every type of Scuba regulator in common use today.
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