Caving was pioneered by Edouard-Alferd Martel (1859–1938) .who first achieved the descent and exploration of the,Gouffre de Padirac. France as early as 1889 and the first complete descent of a 110 metre wet vertical shaft at ,GapingGill, in ,Yorkshire England in 1895. He developed his own techniques based on ropes and metallic ladders. Martel visited Kantucky and notably Mammoth Cave National Park in October 1912. Famous US caver Floyd Collins made in the 1920s important explorations in that area. In the 1930s, as caving became increasingly popular, small exploration teams both in the Alps and in the karstic high plateaus of southwest France (Causses and Pyrenees) transformed cave exploration in both a scientific and recreational activity. , Robert de Joly ,Guy de Lavaur and
Norbert Casteret were prominent figures of that time. They surveyed mostly caves in Southwest France. During WWII, an alpine team composed of , Pierre Chevalier, Fernand Petzl Charles Petit-Didier and others explored theDent de Crolles cave system near Gernoble, France which became the deepest explored cave in the world (-658m) at that time. The lack of available equipment during the war forced Pierre Chevalier and the rest of the team to develop their own equipment, leading to technical innovation. The scaling-pole (1940), nylon ropes (1942), use of explosives in caves (1947) and mechanical rope-ascenders (Henri Brenot's "monkeys", first used by Chevalier and Brenot in a cave in 1934) can be directly associated to the exploration of the Dent de Crolles cave system.
