Professor Picard Plans To Descend Into Sea

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 112, 15 May 1939, Page 7

Professor Picard Plans To Descend Into Sea

GOING FIVE MILES DOWN United Press Association. —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. BRUSSELS, May 12. Professor Auguste Picard is planning a five-mile descent into the sea in a spherical apparatus of his own design. He hopes to break all ‘depth records. Professor Picard’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 Picard’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 eutangled 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 Picard stated that he was willing to undertake a descent if the venture could be financed.