William Hogarth Main
| William "Bill" Hogarth Main | |
|---|---|
| Residence | High Springs, Florida, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Developer of the Hogarthian dive gear configuration |
William "Bill" Hogarth Main is a cave diving pioneer who is best known as a developer in the 1980s, and the namesake of, the "Hogarthian gear configuration" that is a component of the "Doing It Right" (DIR) holistic approach to scuba diving. According to Jarrod Jablonski, the Hogarthian style "has many minor variations, yet its focus asserts a policy of minimalism."[1] The configuration was refined in the 1990s, partially through the Woodville Karst Plain Project (WKPP),[2] established in 1985 and considered among the most aggressive cave diving initiatives in the world.
Described as "a perfectionist," Main adopted the long hose that had been devised by dive partner Sheck Exley and began methodically applying the principle of minimalism, efficiency, and safety to every component of his dive gear.[3] (For more detail on Hogarthian rigs, see Doing It Right (scuba diving)#Equipment and configuration.) Fellow WKPP founding member Bill Gavin added to the Hogarthian approach a philosophy that a well-functioning human body was the most important piece of equipment of a diver and that a diver should care for his or her body accordingly. At this point, George Irvine, director of the WKPP, added a third component emphasizing use of the highest quality and best maintained equipment.[3] Gavin, Main, Lamar English, Irvine, and Jablonski all cultivated the idea that there was an ideal equipment configuration that should be standardized among the WKPP divers. As Main put considerable efforts towards streamlining configurations, his middle name was taken to represent the approach.[4]
While Main continues to tinker with equipment in the search of ever more efficient configurations, the "Hogarthian approach" became widely known, largely through the WKPP breaking every distance record for cave diving without any fatalities or serious injuries. The configuration is sometimes abbreviated "Hog" or "hog," often by divers who are unaware that it refers to a person, with at least one claim in the DIR diving community that William Hogarth Main is a fictional person.[5] While "Hogarthian" and "DIR" were sometimes used interchangeably in early descriptions of the approach, by 2010, "Hogarthian" referred to gear configuration, as opposed to the holistic system of DIR of which Hogarthian rigs were a part.
See also
References
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