Dimitri Rebikoff joined Club Alpin Sous Marin in the late 1940’s and began building underwater housing and developing underwater lighting systems. Rebikoff hired Marcel Rousseau as his assistant and they worked together for several years.
One of their most famous designed was the Torpille system that featured a massive underwater light that extended in front of the camera lense. This 16mm movie camera is part of that system and features a long cylindrical shape and Ivanoff corrective lens. The compact, streamlined shape offered very little frontal surface area, making it very easy for divers to push these cameras through the water, work in confined areas, and work in strong currents. The film mechanism was driven by an electric motor, and the only controls required were the shutter release and aperture control. Leslie Leaney acquired this system for the ISDHF directly from French filmmaker Jacques Stevens.