page_title: Swimfin
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Swimfin / History
caption_attribution_description: English: This image of the sole of a Marina Dolfino full-foot fin is designed to accompany an article about a German standard focusing on the dimensioning of swimming fins. "DIN 7876-A" indicates the number of the German standard (DIN 7876), with particular reference to full-foot fins (DIN 7876-B would denote an open-heel fin). "FL 275" and "FB 105" identify this fin as having a foot length of 275 millimetres and a foot width of 105 millimetres.
context_page_description: Swimfins, swim fins, fins or flippers are finlike accessories worn on the feet, legs or hands and made from rubber, plastic, carbon fiber or combinations of these materials, to aid movement through the water in water sports activities such as swimming, bodyboarding, bodysurfing, float-tube fishing, kneeboarding, riverboarding, scuba diving, snorkeling, spearfishing, underwater hockey, underwater rugby and various other types of underwater diving.
  Swimfins help the wearer to move through water more efficiently, as human feet are too small and inappropriately shaped to provide much thrust, especially when the wearer is carrying equipment that increases hydrodynamic drag. Very long fins and monofins used by freedivers as a means of underwater propulsion do not require high-frequency leg movement. This improves efficiency and helps to minimize oxygen consumption. Short, stiff-bladed fins are effective for short bursts of acceleration and maneuvering, and are useful for bodysurfing.
context_section_description: Early inventors, including Leonardo da Vinci and Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, toyed with the concept of swimfins. Benjamin Franklin made a pair of early swimfins (for hands) when he was a young boy living in Boston, Massachusetts near the Charles River; they were two thin pieces of wood, about the shape of an artist's palette, which allowed him to move faster than he usually did in the water.
  Modern swimfins are an invention by the Frenchman Louis de Corlieu, capitaine de corvette (Lieutenant Commander) in the French Navy. In 1914 Corlieu made a practical demonstration of his first prototype for a group of navy officers, Yves le Prieur among them who, years later in 1926, invented an early model of scuba set. Corlieu left the French Navy in 1924 to fully devote himself to his invention. In April 1933 he registered a patent (number 767013, which in addition to two fins for the feet included two spoon-shaped fins for the hands) and called this equipment propulseurs de natation et de sauvetage (which can be translated literally as "swimming and rescue propulsion device").
  After struggling for years, even producing his fins in his own flat in Paris, Louis de Corlieu finally started mass production of his invention in France in 1939. The same year he issued a licence to Owen Churchill for mass production in the United States. To sell his fins in the USA Owen Churchill changed the French Corlieu's name (propulseurs) to "swimfins", which is still the common English name. Churchill presented his fins to the US Navy, which decided to acquire them for its Underwater Demolition Team (UDT). American UDT and British COPP frogmen (COPP: Combined Operations Pilotage Parties) used the "Churchill fins" during all prior underwater deminings, thus enabling in 1944 the Normandy landings. During the years after World War II had ended, De Corlieu spent time and efforts struggling in civil procedures, suing others for patent infringement.
  In Britain, Dunlop made frogman's fins for World War II, but after the war saw no market for them in peacetime, and, after the first supply of war-surplus frogman's kit was used up, the British public had no access to swimfins (except for home-made attempts such as gluing marine plywood to plimsolls), until Oscar Gugen began importing swimfins and swimming goggles from France.
  In 1946 Lillywhites imported about 1,100 pairs of swimfins; they all sold in under 3 months.
  In 1948 Luigi Ferraro, collaborating with the Italian diving equipment company Cressi-sub, designed the first full-foot fin, the Rondine, named after the Italian word for swallow. A distinctive feature of Cressi's continuing Rondine full-foot fin line is the embossed outline of the bird on the foot pockets and the blades.
  After The Amphibians Club, the UK's first post-war sport diving club, was founded by Ivor Howitt and friends in 1948 in Aberdeenshire, "swim fins were made by wiring stiff rubber piping each side of a flap of inner tube rubber. Very uncomfortable, but they worked. As secretary of The Amphibians, (Howitt) wrote to the Dunlop Rubber Company in February 1949, as they had made the naval frogmen's fins during the war. Incredibly, they replied that they could see no commercial market for swim fins in peacetime. This response reflected the virtual non-existence of sport diving in the UK at that time."
  Seven military, national and international standards relating to swimfins are known to exist: US military standard MIL-S-82258:1965; USSR and CIS standard GOST 22469—77 (Active); German standard DIN 7876:1980;  Polish Industry Standard BN-82/8444-17.02. (Active). Austrian standard ÖNORM S 4224:1988; Malaysian standards MS 974:1985; MS 974:2002 (Active); and European standard EN 16804:2015 (Active).
caption: Swim fin sole showing compliance with German standard DIN 7876:1980
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