DESCENT INTO SEA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 111, 13 May 1939, Page 9

DESCENT INTO SEA

PROF. PICCARD'S PLAN

HOPE OF DEPTH RECORD

(Independent Cable Service.)

(Received May 13, 9.30 a.m.)

BRUSSELS, May 12,

Professor August Piccard is planning a five-mile descent into the sea in a

Professor Piccard's hope is to be able to reach great depths in an apparatus which corresponds, in. a sense, to his stratosphere balloon, in which he ascended to a height of about ten miles. Dr. William Beebe has made notable descents in a "bathysphere" (depth-sphere), a strongly-constructed round chamber lowered by a cable. Professor Piccard's plan is to be free of the suspending cable, and use a freely descending chamber whose movement up or down is controlled by means of ballast. Above, it is to be stabilised by a buoyant chamber filled with oil or solid paraffin; and to prevent it becoming entangled on the sea bottom it will carry a length of heavy cable so that when this touches the bottom the descent will be checked. The pressure of the water at great depths introduces serious problems; the inhabited chamber must be of great strength, and the use of solid paraffin in the upper buoyant chamber is intended to avoid the loss of buoyancy that would result from the compression of liquid oil. In announcing the nature of his proposed apparatus, Professor Piccard stated that he was willing to undertake a descent if the venture could be financed.