FUN IN THE WATER- Rare 1952 "Book"

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FUN IN THE WATER- Rare 1952 "Book"
FUN IN THE WATER
By Commander Bob Winston, USNR
With Drawings by Eric Gurney
1952, Price $1.00
June, Osborn, Foster & Smith, 350 Fifth Ave, NYC
No ISBN or LCCC numbers
Soft cover, 8-1/2 X 11
Fully Illustrated with line drawings
The book describes via verbiage and numerous humorous illustrations the crude diving equipment, diving techniques, and harvesting of 1952
61 pages
This is one of the missing links of American Diving history, ranking rarity and collectability just below Williamson's "20 years under the sea" published in 1936 and Gilpatric's classic work "Compleat Goggler" published in 1938.

The books owned by diving bibliophile collectors are possibly all the copies that will ever be available. And not one has appeared for sale on the used book market since the appearance of E bay. Today many used book dealers toss older soft cover books, especially in the magazine size 8-1/2 X11 size. I suspect FUN IN THE WATER is like the first issue of SDM published in December 1951 in which there is only about 2 dozen in circulation- Perhaps even fewer copies of FUN IN THE WATER .


SDM

[DaleC]

Thanks for the review Dr Sam. Added to my search list.

Recently picked up this one:

World Beneath The Waves by Dr. Gilbert Doukan (He also wrote Under Water Hunting)
John Dr Graff Inc, New York. 1957 LOC 57-9118

Describes the early use scuba from the french perspective with lot's of info about early clubs etc...

[eskimo3883]

I use a few secret key words to search in ebay outside of normal scuba listings and found a copy of this about 2 years ago. It's the only version I have ever seen. When I got it I tried to find out more about it but I could never find any reference to it on-line. Mine is a paperback but it appears to be original. Always though some of the drawings would make a nice vintage but quirky t-shirt.

[eskimo3883]

By The way,

If anyone wants a non-vintage copy of "20 years under the sea" its available in public domain as a 18 megabyte PDF. It's a very good copy and unlike many public domain versions the photos are reasonable quality. You can download it legally and for free.

http://archive.org/details/20yearsundersea00jwwi

[eskimo3883]

These are links to the Film of the Field Museum-Williamson Expedition to the Bahamas during the spring and early summer of 1929. The expedition was for the primary purpose of collecting material and specimens for the Museum's projected new Hall of Fishes. Mr. J.E. Williamson of New York, participated in the expedition and supplied equipment for submarine observations. Taxidermist Leon L. Pray accompanied the expedition.

http://archive.org/details/UnderTheSea1929reel1
http://archive.org/details/UnderTheSea1929reel2
http://archive.org/details/UnderTheSea1929reel3
http://archive.org/details/UnderTheSea1929reel4