"The longer we were in it, the smaller it seemed to get..."
William Beebe, deep-sea explorer
Otis Barton's (1899-1992) famous marine exploration vehicle was reminiscent of a naval mine. A simple sphere made of steel, it once dangled from a 2-mile (3.5 km) cable deep into the ocean. Unlike a mine, however, the bathysphere was intended to hold two intrepid explorers, and at less than 5 feet (1.5 m) across, it was not exactly designed for comfort.
In 1928, Barton was just a student, but his blueprint for the bathysphere caught the attention of scientist and explorer William Beebe (1877-1962). A collector of rare species, Beebe had already consulted several professional engineers about building a deep-sea diving vessel. He was impressed by Barton's design and started making plans for a test dive.
The secret to the bathysphere's success was its simplicity—its spherical form meant that pressure was evenly distributed across its surface. Underwater, pressure rapidly increases with depth. At just 328 feet (100 m) below the surface, pressure is equivalent to 142 pounds per square inch (10 kg/cm2). In 1934, after several previous descents, Barton and Beebe plummeted a staggering 2,950 feet (900 m) into the North Atlantic Ocean near Bermuda, breaking allprevious records for manned submersibles.
