Caving equipment is equipment used by cavers and speleologists to aid and protect them while exploring caves. The term may also be used to refer to equipment used to document caves, such as photographic and surveying equipment. Originally, cave diving equipment was quite limited, but the increasing popularity of caving during the 20th century led to the creation of specialist caving equipment and companies. Due to the greatly varying conditions of caves throughout the world there is a multitude of different equipment types and categories. Cavers exploring a largely dry system may wear a fleece one-piece undersuit with a protective oversuit while cavers exploring a very wet cave may opt to use wetsuits. Cavers in large dry systems in the tropics and in desert climates may simply opt to wear shorts and a T-shirt. History The earliest cavers in Europe and North America were limited in their explorations by a lack of suitable equipment. Explorers of the early 1800s, when caving began to become more common, caved in tweed suits and used candles for illumination. Exploration was usually limited to drier caves, as there was little to protect cavers from the cold once they became wet. Later, cavers began to adopt miners' lamps, which were designed for underground use and were reasonably reliable, though their light was not especially powerful. Lighting magnesium strips was a popular way of illuminating large chambers. E. A. Martel, a French caver, created a collapsible canvas canoe which he used to explore several caves containing long flooded sections, such as the Marble Arch Cave in Northern Ireland. His expeditionary equipment was described in 1895 as: "a canvas boat, some hundreds of feet of rope-ladders, a light portable folding wooden ladder, ropes, axes, compass, barometer, telephone, map etc." The acetylene lamp—powered by carbide—was one of the main light sources used by cavers during the 20th century. Electric miners' headlamps, powered by lead-acid batteries were later used, eventually superseded by LED lighting, which offers superior duration and brightness and is considerably lighter. Vertical caving was undertaken with rope ladders. These were cumbersome and unwieldy, especially when wet, and sometimes required teams of donkeys to carry them. The French explorer Robert de Joly pioneered the use of ever lighter rope ladders until developing the Elektron Ladder, a light wire ladder with aluminium rungs. The lightness and portability of these ladders revolutionised the exploration of deep caves, paving the