Back plate/wings or BCD

[DRE]

Cavedivers actually invented the very first boyancy device, which were milk or water jugs they carried with them and filled with gas - then the belly bag (kinda like a horsecollar but not as comfortable) and the Scubapro Stab jacket. The problem with the Scubapro was that there was no place to clip off lights, stage bottles, etc. It was a guy Flannagan who made the first backplate out of a stopsign in the 1979 and mated it with a wing. Bill "Hogarth" Main jumped on the idea and used it as the basis for the Hogarthian gear configuration. Diverite started producing the first commercial plate in the early 80's.
The reason why the system wasn't any more popular was that it wasn't actively promoted (nor did Diverite have the ad budget of Scubapro)> Furthermore, in those days the cave community was very hush hush about all of their activities, as to not attract divers who shouldn't be in a cave. Don't also gorget that as recent as 1993 technical diving was banned from DEMA (guess who played a big role in that?), so that a lot of the major gear revolutions never even saw daylight. So in a sense we never came full circle - it's always been there.