This article is about underwater diving equipment.

For an article on the activity of diving underwater, see Scuba diving.

For the astronomical instrument called SCUBA (= Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array), see James Clerk Maxwell Telescope#Instrumentation.

SCUBA is an acronym for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. These initials originated in 1939 in the US Navy to refer to US military diver's rebreather sets. As with radar, the acronym has become so familiar that it is often not capitalised and is treated as an ordinary word: for example, it has been taken into the Welsh language as "sgwba". A scuba set provides a scuba diver with the breathing gas necessary to breathe underwater.

Types of scuba set

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Modern scuba sets are of two types:

• open-circuit (In Europe, but not the U.S., often called an "aqualung", see Aqua-Lung™). Here the diver breathes in from the set and out to waste. This type of equipment is relatively simple, making it cheap and reliable. The duration of open-circuit dives is shorter than a dive with a rebreather, in proportion to the weight and bulk of the set. It can be uneconomic when used with expensive gas mixes such as heliox and trimix. Most divers use standard air (i.e. 21% Oxygen / 79% Nitrogen). The cylinder is nearly always worn on the back. "Twin sets" with two backpack cylinders were much more common in the 1960s than now. Submarine Products sold a sport air scuba with 3 backpack cylinders. Sometimes cave divers have cylinders slung at their sides instead.

See diving cylinder for more information about the cylinders and how they are arranged.

• closed-circuit/semi-close circuit (also referred to as a rebreather). Here the diver breathes in from the set, and out back into the set where the exhaled gas is reprocessed to make it fit to breathe again. Since 80% or more of the oxygen remains in normal exhaled gas, and is thus wasted, rebreathers use gas very economically, making longer dives possible and special mixes cheaper to use at the expense of more complicated technology and extensive experience and training requirements. There are three variants of rebreather: oxygen, semi-closed circuit and fully-closed circuit rebreathers.

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