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The first caving club in history: Yorkshire Ramblers Club
After John Birkbeck started exploring some english caves such as Gaping Gill and Alum Pot in 1847 and 1848, lots of other people started doing the same. The first caving clubb created in York was called Yorkshire Ramblers Club and it was created in 1892. Nowadays, this is the most popular and important sport speleologing club in England and in the hole world -
Caving as an specialized sport
The pioneer of the caving as a real sport for entretainment was Édouard Alfred Martel. He developed a new caving techniques based on ropes and metallic ladders. This changed a lot the caving activity. He became very famous and he got invited by the famous caver Floyd Collins to the Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. They made important discoverments there and also in the french Alpes. Their explored caves became very famous for enthusiast cavers -
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Tech development during the 40's
During the WW2 the french caver Pierre Chevalier and the rest of their team had to develop their equipment: the caving pole (1940); the nailon cord (1942); using explosives to open caves (1947) and the mechanic cord ascending machine, first used in 1934 but fully developed on 1946 -
The creation of the National Speleology Society (NSS)
The NSS was created by cavers and speleologists from all parts of the United States. This asociation was created for the exploration, conserving and analyzing of the U.S.A. caves -
Exploring new caves in France and expanding the sport-caving places to 750 more or less in the hole country
Robert de Joly, Norbert Casteret and Guy de Lavaur were three very important explorers that discovered over 60 different caves in the south-east of France. During the World War II, a team with 12 explorers such as Pierre Chevalier, Charles Petit-Didier or Fernand Petzl explored the caves of the Dent de Crolles. They discovered the deepest sport cave in the world nowadays (658 meters way down) -
The invention of the single-rope technique (SRT)
The single-rope technique, as the names says, is a vertical climbing technique were you only have to use one rope to descend in vertical cave walls. The SRT was invented by the american Bill Cuddington, beter known as "Vertical Bill" -
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The invention of the Jumar (the first sigle-rope ascender) and the Pretzl Croll (ascending tool)
This was invented by the two important swiss cavers and alpinists Juesi Widner and Marti Grossenbacher. Ten years later Bruno Dessler and the important Fernand Pretzl created the first rope-ascending tool, beter known as Pretzl Croll -
The fundation of the Pretzl Company
Before the great invention of Fernand Pretzl and Bruno Dressler the french alpinist decided to create "Pretzl" to sell his Croll and for the developing of other caving and alpinism tools like the rappel rack