Louis Marie de Corlieu (born 23 November 1888 in
Bourges
Bourges ( ; ; ''Borges'' in Berrichon) is a commune in central France on the river Yèvre (Cher), Yèvre. It is the capital of the Departments of France, department of Cher (department), Cher, and also was the capital city of the former provin ...
; died 19 October 1967 or 1971) in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, was a French naval officer and inventor of the
swimfin.
Military service
He served as
Capitaine de corvette (lieutenant commander) in the French navy in the First World War. In 1925 he left the navy to study techniques for survival at sea.
Invention of the swimfin
After working as a hydrographer in the
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo (, ; ) was a Belgian colonial empire, Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960 and became the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville). The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Repu ...
from 1928 to 1933, he developed swimfins in 1933, patented them in Paris, and registered them in seven other countries.
De Corlieu demonstrated his first prototype of a modern swimfin in front of an audience of officers which included
Yves Le Prieur
Yves Paul Gaston Le Prieur (23 March 1885 – 1 June 1963) was an officer of the French Navy and an inventor.
Adventures in the Far East
Le Prieur followed his father in joining the French navy. As an officer he served in Asia and used traditio ...
who invented an underwater breathing apparatus in 1926 to 1934.
The combination of de Corlieu's fins with le Prieur's breathing apparatus in 1935 was a significant development towards the free-swimming scuba diver.
In 1939, de Corlieu finally started mass production of his fins, which until then he had made in his apartment in Paris. In the same year, the American
Owen P. Churchill bought a license from Corlieu to produce the fins in the United States, and began to market them 6 months later. They were adopted by the US Navy in 1940 for their combat swimmers, who used them during the Normandy landing and in other operations. In 1945, he invented a more flexible model, which was copied and used for underwater hunting.
After the end of the Second World War, these fins and the open circuit underwater breathing apparatus (Aqua Lung) helped develop the scuba diving popularized by
Philippe Tailliez and
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, (, also , ; 11 June 191025 June 1997) was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker and author. He co-invented the first successful open-circuit self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA), called the A ...
. De Corlieu was constantly involved in litigation to assert his rights as the inventor and pursue all the companies that copied his invention and sold their products without paying royalties.
The book ''Le Premier Delphinus Humain'' (The First Human Dolphin), based on the archives of the Corlieu family and of the French Navy, tells its story. On 9 June 2018 a commemorative plaque was unveiled in the city of
, in memory of a demonstration crossing the bay of Luz in front of French naval observers, on 10 June 1933, during which de Corlieu swam for 6 hours in water at 12°C, traversing 8 km. The French Navy declined to adopt the "swimming and rescue propellants", as they were named at the time.
Louis de Corlieu was inducted to the
International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame as an early pioneer of diving.
References
20th-century French inventors
French Navy officers
French military personnel of World War I
1888 births
1967 deaths
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