Part as a promise to his friend and founder of the museum and part as an effort to ensure a lasting legacy, Dan Johnson, dive store owner and diving instructor, has opened a scuba diving museum. 
The 1,800-square-foot museum, called Lockwood Pioneer Diving Museum, is at 7307 North Alpine Road, Love Park, Ill. It is in the same complex with Loves Park Scuba.
The museum is named in honor of James Lockwood, who built scuba equipment in the late 1930s. Lockwood, born in Racine, Wis., moved to Rockford as a young man. He founded Lockwood Oil Co. service stations in Rockford, but sold the company to pursue his passion–scuba diving. He died in 2003 at age 92.
“Jim Lockwood was a scuba diving pioneer. He helped establish the sport of scuba diving and bring it to the mainstream,” Johnson said. “He was active in the sport of diving well before Cousteau ‘invented’ scuba with the first artificial diving lung.”
Lockwood was one of the early pioneers of the sport, building his own rebreathers in 1938. Lockwood developed an underwater camera housing that was used in the Tarzan movies of the 1930s and developed underwater props for the film “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” …. To read more about this museum go to Scuba Museum Opens in Illinois, Dive Shop Owner Continues Diving Legacy by Rick Stratton, Divinghistory.com