Leonardo da Vinci included reed tubes as the breathing equipment in his diving-suit design. The tubes were intended to extend from the diver’s mouth above the water’s surface while the diver worked underwater.
His design included a mask, a suit, and other equipment intended to help a person remain submerged. Leonardo also drew a system involving a bladder or container, reflecting his interest in managing air and buoyancy. The concept was recorded in his notebooks in the early sixteenth century and is often cited as an early diving-suit proposal.
The design had practical limitations. Long breathing tubes would create resistance to inhaling and exhaling, especially as the diver moved deeper below the surface. Leonardo’s notes therefore show inventive exploration rather than a proven underwater life-support system. The invention is sometimes incorrectly described as a modern scuba suit; it did not use a compressed-air cylinder carried by the diver. Modern scuba equipment emerged much later through developments in regulators, air tanks, and buoyancy control.