
Welcome
on the Spiro-Vintage website dedicated to the historic brand
LA SPIROTECHNIQUE
founded by Commander Cousteau and the Air Liquide company in 1946

As soon as I seriously began collecting LA SPIROTECHNIQUE's double-hose regulators, I was surprised to see that many seasoned collectors didn't know how to date them, and especially didn't know why there were different variants.
As a naturally curious person, I set out to establish the chronology and typology of the CG45, Mistral, Royal Mistral, and other regulators from the brand, but I quickly encountered a lack of information!
Indeed, when LA SPIROTECHNIQUE moved from Paris to Carros in 1977, almost all of the archives were destroyed because the new management at the time had decided to wipe the slate clean of the company's past!
​
My long and fascinating research is based on documents such as catalogs, technical manuals, and advertisements in magazines of the time. Of course, diving scholars like Jacques Chabbert, Philippe Rousseau, and Pierre-Yves Le Bigot have shared their knowledge with me, since unfortunately almost all of the members of LA SPIROTECHNIQUE from that era are no longer with us.
In the end, it's a true archaeological work! It's important to understand that my research isn't static, and corrections are made regularly. My work is based on my discoveries, but also on hypotheses based on observations of regulators in other collections, and on deductions, while waiting to discover the missing evidence to confirm a particular piece of information or modify a particular piece of data (for example, a date). And sometimes even rediscovering information that has been lost to living (or rather, to diving) memory!
If you have any observations or documents that could lead me to new information, I'm all ears! Contact me and let's share our knowledge before it fades into oblivion...
Enjoy reading.