The first diving suit was invented in the 1950s. In1952, a physicist named Hugh Bradner from the University of California, Berkeley camp up with the idea to create wetsuit. He was working to further improve the equipment used by US Navy frogmen. The idea was to help & extend dives in cold water. 

  Bradner argues that as long as the fabric of the wetsuit is insulated, a tiny layer of trapped water between the fabric of the wetsuit and the skin can work as an insulator when heated by body warmth. Willard Bascom, a research engineer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, proposed neoprene as a wetsuit material.

In 1951, Bascom and Brandner sought to patent their diving suit design, but their application was denied. The United States Navy was similarly uninterested in their neoprene wetsuits, citing fears that air bubbles in the neoprene would make Navy divers more susceptible to sonar detection. Bradner later founded EDCO to sell wetsuits to the general public, but it wasn't very successful.