text: In World War II or soon after, British commando frogmen and clearance divers started occasionally diving with oxygen rebreathers adapted for semi-closed-circuit nitrox (which they called "mixture") diving by fitting larger cylinders and carefully setting the gas flow rate using a flow meter. These developments were kept secret until independently duplicated by civilians in the 1960s.
  Lambertson published a paper on nitrox in 1947.
  In the 1950s, the United States Navy (USN) documented enriched oxygen gas procedures for military use of what we today call nitrox, in the US Navy Diving Manual.
  In 1955, E. Lanphier described the use of nitrogen–oxygen diving mixtures, and the equivalent air depth method for calculating decompression from air tables.
  In the 1960s, A. Galerne used on-line blending for commercial diving.
  In 1970, Morgan Wells, who was the first director of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Diving Center, began instituting diving procedures for oxygen-enriched air. He introduced the concept of Equivalent Air Depth (EAD). He also developed a process for mixing oxygen and air which he called a continuous blending system.  For many years Wells' invention was the only practical alternative to partial pressure blending. In 1979 NOAA published Wells' procedures for the scientific use of nitrox in the NOAA Diving Manual.