Bathysphere was a unique spherical deep-sea submersible which was unpowered and lowered into the ocean on a cable, and was used to conduct a series of dives off the coast of Bermuda from 1930 to 1934.
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12 Facts About Bathysphere
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2.
The Bathysphere was designed in 1928 and 1929 by the American engineer Otis Barton, to be used by the naturalist William Beebe for studying undersea wildlife.
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3.
Beebe and Barton conducted dives in the Bathysphere together, marking the first time that a marine biologist observed deep-sea animals in their native environment.
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4.
Beebe and Barton used the Bathysphere to perform shallower "contour dives", mapping Bermuda's underwater geography.
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5.
Bathysphere obtained more funds for his dives by writing an article describing them for the June 1931 issue of National Geographic titled "Round Trip to Davy Jones' Locker".
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7.
The steel body of the Bathysphere was as strong as ever, but the quartz windows had developed minute fractures which would prevent them from withstanding the pressure of the deep sea, and one of the copper bolts for the hatch was found to be damaged due to the explosive decompression after the failed test dive in 1932.
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8.
The Bathysphere was next put on display at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island in 1957.
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9.
In 1994, the Bathysphere was removed from the Aquarium for a renovation, and languished in a storage yard under the Coney Island Cyclone until 2005, when the Zoological Society returned it to its display at the aquarium.
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10.
Beebe's Bathysphere's dives served as an inspiration for Jacques Piccard, the son of the balloonist Auguste Piccard, to perform his own record-setting descent in 1960 to a depth of seven miles using a self-powered submersible called a bathyscaphe.
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11.
The Bathysphere itself served as a model for later submersibles such as the DSV Alvin.
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12.
Beebe named several new species of deep-sea animals on the basis of observations he made during his Bathysphere dives, initiating a controversy which has never been completely resolved.
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