British diving engineer Joseph Salim Peress invented the Tritonia in 1932, the first truly usable atmospheric diving suit. The Tritonia maintained internal pressure at one atmosphere, allowing a diver to work at great depths without the risk of decompression sickness, and was successfully demonstrated in the English Channel.

Peress's Tritonia, a giant leap in diving technology, embodied the dream of a diver free from the constraints of pressure. This suit, and its successors, the JIM suit and others, captured the imagination of science fiction writers and poets, who saw in the armored aquanaut a symbol of human transcendence and the exploration of the final frontier of the planet.