BEV MORGAN

Bev Morgan began free diving and surfing in 1949, a year after leaving high school and became a Los Angeles County lifeguard in 1952. That year, he purchased an early Aqua Lung scuba unit and founded the Los Angeles County Instructors program, which was the first scuba instructor's program available to the public. He also wrote the first Instruction manual that was based on the Scripps Institute program and also the Underwater Safety, a standard diving book of the 1950's.

Bev’s ideas and inventions have had a huge impact on commercial and sport diving for nearly half a century. He also began manufacturing wetsuits and developed what would become Body Glove. As an early diving writer and photographer his work appeared in Skin Diver magazine, and also dove commercially for abalone and in the oilfields. In 1966, in association with Bob Kirby, a former Navy diver, he started The Kirby Morgan Corporation, a company that would change the face of commercial diving forever with its development of lightweight, comfortable, professional diving gear. It also produced the diving equipment for the movie "Sphere." Today the company is the world standard for surface supplied diving helmets and its products are employed in every ocean in the world. Kirby Morgan, a name that has become synonymous with outstanding diving equipment and the company through which Bev Morgan continues to serve the diving industry.

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