Jacques Cousteau biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born in the village of Saint-André-de-Cubzac, in southwestern France, on June 11, 1910. The younger of two sons born to Daniel and Elizabeth Cousteau, he suffered from stomach problems and anemia as a young child. At age 4, Cousteau learned to swim and started a lifelong fascination with water. As he entered adolescence, he showed a strong curiosity for mechanical objects and upon purchasing a movie camera, he took it apart to understand how it operated.

Jacques Cousteau's curiosity notwithstanding, he did not do well in school. At 13, He was sent to boarding school in Alsace, France. After he completed his preparatory studies, he attended Collège Stanislas in Paris and in 1930, Cousteau entered the Ecole Navale (French Naval Academy) at Brest, France. After graduation, as a gunnery officer, he joined the French Navy's information service. He took his camera long and shot many rolls of film at exotic ports-o-call in the Indian and South Pacific oceans.

In 1933, Jacques Cousteau was in a major automobile accident that nearly took his life. During his rehabilitation, he took up daily swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. A friend, Philippe Tailliez, gave Cousteau a pair of swimming goggles, which opened him to the mysteries of the sea and began his quest to understand the underwater world. In 1937, Cousteau married Simone Melchior.

They had two sons, Jean-Michel and Phillipe. Both sons, in time, would join their father in underwater world expeditions. Simone died in 1990 and one year later, the senior Cousteau married Francine Triplet, with whom he had a daughter and son (born while Cousteau was married to Simone).

Famed Explorer

During World War II, when Paris fell to the Nazis, Jacques  Cousteau and his family took refuge in the small town of Megreve, near the Swiss border. For the first few years of the war, he quietly continued his underwater experiments and explorations. In 1943 he met Emile Gagnan, a French engineer who shared his passion for discovery. Around tthis time, compressed air cylinders were invented and Cousteau and Gagnan experimented with snorkel hoses, body suits and breathing apparatus.

In time, they developed the first aqua-lung device allowing divers to stay underwater for long periods of time. Cousteau was also instrumental in the development of a waterproof camera that could withstand the high pressure of deep water. During this time, Cousteau made two documentaries on underwater exploration, Par dix-huit mètres de fond ("18 Meters Deep") and Épaves ("Shipwrecks").