Is PADI the best?
It is hard to argue with 70 percent of the trained divers yearly.
PADI History: Let take a look

In 1966 in Illinois, John Cronin, a scuba equipment salesman for U.S. Divers, and Ralph Ericson, an educator and swimming instructor, were concerned about the scuba diving industry. They felt that the current scuba certification agencies were unprofessional, didn’t use state of the art instruction and made it unnecessarily difficult for people to enter the sport. And the equipment was not suitable to the civilian population. John and Ralph knew there had to be a safer, easy way for people to learn to breathe underwater.

After several meeting in restaurants in Morton Grove and Niles, Illinois, they decided it was time to start a scuba training organization. John insisted that the word “professional” be in the name of the company. Ralph wanted an “association of diving instructors.” Soon, the acronym
PADI was born:

The Professional Association of Diving Instructors (A nonprofit corporation)

Purpose
PADI exists to develop programs that encourage and fulfill the public interest in recreational scuba diving and snorkeling worldwide.

Vision

PADI intends to be the world leader in the educational development of scuba diving professionals and enthusiasts.

Slogan
PADI – The Way the World Learns to Dive.

Mission
We want to teach the world to scuba dive.

Tasks, Goals and Purposes
PADI strives to be the world’s most respected and successful organization in recreational scuba diving and snorkeling. PADI is committed to product and service excellence, the professional growth and security of PADI Members and employees, healthy competition and partnership within the dive industry and to providing training and opportunity for all who seek to enjoy and safely explore and protect our planet’s oceans, lakes and waterways.

At the start PADI recruited other instructors, many of these who believed in PADI’s philosophy of diver training came from NAUI and YMCA. They submitted for review and PADI approved the curriculum of their submitted courses. Certifications were given throughout the 60s and early 70s. PADI was the first to introduce the positive identification card (PIC) with the diver’s photo. In 1975 PADI introduced their first Instructor Training Course (ITC) in the Philippines in Oct 75. This course turned out so well that PADI instituted it worldwide to train their instructors.

They hired Nick Icorn from the U.S. Divers’ engineering team, who worked with Erickson to develop a modular training program for the PADI Open Water Diver course, the first of its kind. PADI’s unique training methods started to catch on.

In the late 1970’s and early 80’s PADI began creating its own integrated, multi-media student and instructor educational materials for each course. They developed the specialty continued educational courses. This development spawned an incredible growth period for PADI and made it unique from other agencies.
PADI was the first to have its courses approved for college credit in the USA.
PADI was the first diver training agency to be allowed to teach the Medic First Aid course. And now the Emergency First Response course which was designed by PADI.

In 1984, to insure consistency in all the Instructor Training Courses, PADI revamped their instructor training to allow course director to develop the candidate and then PADI staff examiners was sent out to do the final evaluations. In 1984 PADI also became profit making and continues to give away several thousand dollars annually in grants.
Today PADI certifies over 70 percent of the divers in the World. They issue over 1 million certifications yearly.

PADI has worldwide offices and are recognized in over 183 countries.