Celebrating the "Calypso"

[Noodlefish]

As most of you know, orange is a commonly-used colour in the world of diving, being bright at shallow depths and providing decent contrast at depth. It also looks awesome and instantly identifies you as someone who knows their stuff (okay, I may have made that last bit up, but it is the first of April).

So, it'll come as absolutely no surprise to you that I have a little bit of orange floating around the house. And seeing that Al has recently opened up this little Dive Shack, I thought I'd share some with you.

This is an Aqua-Lung "Calypso" which appeared in about 1963, 20 years after Cousteau invented the aqualung. There was an entire Calypso range, including first and second stages, the Jet-Air and even a 35mm camera of the same name. I don't own all of those items (yet) but here it is with something equally as orange!



200 feet would have been a hell of a depth to go to in '63, even for Cousteau.



A fantastic logo - "Aqua-lung" was owned by La Spirotechnique, of course.



Lovely high wrist-mounted depth gauge, with curved lugs. You can't beat this stuff!



Hope you like it. And welcome to Ocean Ready!

M

[Noodlefish]

Hmmm. No love for vintage dive gear. Hey ho.

[ATG]

Looks cool to me Mat... love that kind of stuff... I have a 1968 copy of Skin Diver Magazine which probably has some good stuff in it for you which I must send over when I get a minute... it's a cool thing...thanks for posting....

[Pascal S]

I agree it's really cool to look at.

But since I know zip about diving gear, I just refrained from making any useless comment that would outline my ignorance. But I certainly did enjoy the opening post of this thread!

[StampeSV4]

Now that I really like - if military watches weren't my focus it would definitely be vintage dive watches and associated equipment such as depth gauges. That Calypso is a real gem - as they said about Ursula Andress in Dr No, "Great lugs and logo"!

Regards

Jon'.

[Noodlefish]

Thanks guys. Plenty more where that came from. The hardest thing is matching them to appropriate watches, given that the dive gear guys took a while to get into watches. Spiro / US Divers only got involved with Doxa in the 70s, as I understand it, and the Beuchat / Spiro divers like those used by the MN, date from the early 80s. To be truly authentic, I should probably get a Jenny 1000m to go with the '63 Calypso - although some of the earlier gear should be matched to Cousteau's crew's Rolex, Blancpain or LIP watches. Hey ho.

[onespeed]

"To be truly authentic, I should probably get a Jenny 1000m to go with the '63 Calypso - although some of the earlier gear should be matched to Cousteau's crew's Rolex, Blancpain or LIP watches. Hey ho."

Mat,
Read this after my post. Have a look at the Personal Favourites thread .

Gary

[onespeed]

Here's a more modern version, I found on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Vintage-Calyps...item27b053d38a

Just goes to show that collecting doesn't have to be expensive .

Gary

[Noodlefish]

Originally Posted by onespeed

Here's a more modern version, I found on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Vintage-Calyps...item27b053d38a

Just goes to show that collecting doesn't have to be expensive .

Gary

Now that one is interesting (and not that modern), as it has the No-Deco Limits on the outside (fixed) bezel. Pretty useful!

I've also seen Calypsos with a secondary capillary depth gauge on the bezel, providing redundancy. Quite cool. Capillaries were good at shallow depth – being hyper-sensitive – but quite often got damaged.